


A Forest of Trees

by bwayfan25



Category: ER (TV 1994)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And take care of each other, Family, Found Family, Fulfilling everyone's wishes for the ER to act like a big family all the time, Missing Scenes, One Shot Collection, Set in the Unexpected Circumstances universe, You don't have to read the AU but it may make more sense if you do, okay maybe that's just me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-02-22 13:03:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 56,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22216501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bwayfan25/pseuds/bwayfan25
Summary: Family isn't a tree, but an entire forest of trees. And amidst the horror and heartbreak of emergency medicine, a big forest can make all the pain and hardship just a little bit easier to deal with.A series of one-shots and missing scenes set in the Unexpected Circumstances universe where the ER supports and loves each other like the big found family they are. Bounces around seasons, but focus is mainly on seasons three through eight (featuring a lot of Susan Lewis).
Comments: 45
Kudos: 29





	1. Cutting In

There was something about the combination of wedding cake, wine, and the celebration of romantic love that turned people back out onto the dance floor for another round even when only a few minutes before, they were ready to fall over. (Whether this was due to exhaustion or tipsiness varied from person to person, though for most, it was a combination of the two.)

Elizabeth and Mark had taken a break from dancing to chat with their guests, but had returned for another round of slow-dancing. They swayed quietly in the corner, murmuring to each other in between kissing. 

When “La Vie en Rose” began to fade into “Just The Way You Are,” Mark felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to find Susan hovering at his shoulder. 

She looked between the newlyweds, raising her eyebrows. 

“May I cut in?”

The couple chuckled and broke apart. But as Mark made to take Susan’s hand, Susan made to take Elizabeth’s. 

“Uh, Mark, I came to dance with  _ Elizabeth _ . Not you,” Susan said sincerely. “She’s much prettier than you.”

She wrapped her arm around Elizabeth’s waist and raised her eyebrows at him, trying hard to stifle her laugh at his resulting pout. But she couldn’t help but laugh along with Elizabeth at his sad puppy-dog eyes.

“Okay,  _ fine _ ,” Susan said, rolling her eyes. She looked at Elizabeth. “Do you mind if I steal him for a song?”

“No, not at all,” Elizabeth said, shaking her head. “The baby’s been dancing on my bladder for the last twenty minutes. And I really  _ must _ sit down.”

Susan released Elizabeth so she could kiss Mark on the cheek before Susan took Mark’s hand. 

“Poor Elizabeth. She can’t even get drunk at her own wedding,” Susan said, shaking her head as she watched the bride disappear into the crowd. “You just  _ had _ to go and knock her up didn’t you?”

Mark chuckled, which made Susan smile. 

“When we were out dress shopping a couple months ago, I explained the concept of the shotgun wedding to her,” Susan explained as she and Mark began to slowly sway in time. “At one point, she got really offended and I was worried that she was mad I was implying you guys were rushing into this because of the baby. 

“But then she said something about, ‘How could I advocate for having a gun at a wedding when I see the horrors they do in the ER every day?’ It took me a good ten minutes to convince her that it didn’t mean there was an  _ actual  _ shotgun at the wedding.”

Mark raised his eyebrows and gave a slight shrug. 

“I’m sure there’s a shotgun at a shotgun wedding  _ somewhere _ .”

“Oh, I’m  _ positive _ there is somewhere,” Susan agreed. “But not here.”

Mark chuckled again. Susan smiled at him broadly. 

“And it’s just a couple weeks until she has the baby,” Susan said excitedly. “Soon, there’ll be a Mark Jr.”

“We’re  _ pretty _ sure it’s gonna be a girl, Susan.”. 

“Fine. An  _ Elizabeth _ Jr.,” Susan suggested. Then, she lit up. “Wait! You could name her after her- Wait, nevermind.”

“What?”

“I was going to suggest that you name her after her Aunt Susan…” Susan explained slowly. “But we’ve been down that road once already, have we?”

Mark let out a belly laugh.

“I think two Suzie’s is enough,” he said, grinning. 

“I agree,” Susan replied, nodding. “Besides, I don’t think Little Suzie would be very happy with you. She’s already had to put up with a little sister stealing her spotlight. Having a new baby cousin with the same name as her might be the last straw.”

“You haven’t called her ‘Little Suzie’ in a long time,” Mark commented. “She put the kibosh on that?”

“Yeah,” Susan said with a small sigh. “She insists that she’s not little anymore, therefore she can’t be ‘Little Suzie.’ And ‘Medium Suzie’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it.”

Mark gave a little shrug of acknowledgement. 

For a moment, they just danced in silence, before Mark caught her watching him with a small smile on her face. His brow furrowed in question.

“What?”

“Are you happy, Mark?”

Mark pretended to consider the question seriously for a moment, but he spotted Elizabeth waddling back towards the dance floor with Robert Romano in tow. In the moment he made eye contact with his new wife, she rolled her eyes and winked at him. 

Susan took his boyish grin as a resounding ‘Yes.’

When Mark looked back give Susan his verbal reply, he caught her doing the same thing he had done. But, instead of looking at Elizabeth and Romano, she was grinning softly at Kerry, who was watching them from her seat at the edge of the dance floor. 

“Are you happy, Susan?”

Susan looked back at him and smiled. Her eyes began to glisten with tears, but that didn’t stop her from nodding. 

“Very happy.”

“Then, why are you crying?”

Susan gave a watery laugh.

“Because you’re here and because it’s a wedding.” Susan heaved a sigh. “And also because I’ve already had two glasses of wine and ever since Charlie, that’s all it takes.”

Mark grinned and was about to comment when he felt not a tap on his shoulder, but a tug to his pant leg. 

He and Susan both looked down to find a small blonde Kindergartner looking up at them. 

Though she had only been recently dropped off at the reception by the babysitter, she had nonetheless wanted to dress for the occasion, as evidenced by the sundress she had picked out to wear (though it was a couple months out of season and also a little bit small on her).

“Well, hi, Suzie,” Mark greeted. “Your mom and I were just talking about you a little while ago.”

Suzie narrowed her eyes at them for a moment, as if ready to ask them  _ why _ they had been talking about her, but she was a girl on a mission.

She looked up at Susan.

“Momma wants to know if you guys can dance together one more time before we go home,” Suzie informed her. “Also, Charlie’s shoes are on the wrong feet but she won’t let Momma fix them.”

Susan glanced up towards Kerry, who had apparently given up on arguing with Charlie and was now watching her and the Ross twins (also recently delivered to the reception by their babysitter) dance together in a circle. 

Susan sighed and looked at Mark. The song was fading anyways, so they released hands. But when Susan offered Suzie a hand to make their way back to the rest of the family, Suzie shook her head. 

“If you’re going to go dance with Momma, then I wanna dance with Uncle Mark.”

Susan glanced up at Mark, who just shrugged and took Suzie’s hand.

“What can I say?” he remarked quietly to Susan. “If a Lewis woman asks you to dance, you don’t just say no.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, everyone! Hope you're all good. It's me again, with the same AU because 1) I spent a lot of time working on it and 2) I've still got a lot of ideas. But really, it's because 3) Everyone gets along and nobody gets stabbed. As a reader commented on "Unexpected Circumstances", they enjoyed getting "... to see all of these characters acting like adults with medical degrees and not middle school mean girls," and I have to agree. I'd like to say that is the power of Susan Lewis, but I can't deny the power of making Kerry Weaver chill the fuck out a.k.a go to therapy like she (and everyone else tbh) deserve. 
> 
> Anyways, I've got some originals to post her as well as some I've posted on tumblr and will repost here. I may be open to some prompts if you're so inclined. Everything revolves around family, but some will also include romance, teasing, and grief. But isn't that what family is all about?
> 
> Hope you have fun because I know I will. Writing keeps me sane and I already finished writing my original novel, so I don't know what to do with myself amidst wedding planning. 
> 
> Anyways, love you all and hope you enjoy your stay. 
> 
> Until next time.


	2. Regarding Date Night

Mark glanced up at the pair of chatting women across from him before shifting uncomfortably again and then (fruitlessly) trying to refocus his attention on the chart in front of him. 

However, Susan throwing her head back in laughter at some unheard comment Elizabeth had just made to her made it just about impossible to stop himself from looking up at them again. Laughter ensued again as he happened to make eye contact with them at that same moment, so he tried to play it off by starting up a conversation with Doug.

“What do you think they’re talking about?” he asked quietly, nodding surreptitiously to the other side of the desk. 

Doug glanced up out of the side of his eye before returning his attention to the paperwork in front of him. To Mark’s chagrin, he had assumed a bit of a grin. 

“I don’t know, Mark. What  _ could  _ your best friend and your girlfriend could be giggling about together?”

“Well, obviously they’re talking about  _ me _ ,” Mark said, rolling his eyes. “But, I mean, what do you think they’re  _ talking _ about?”

“Depends. Have you slept with Elizabeth yet?” Mark didn’t answer, which resulted in a half-shrug. “Only one thing they could be talking about.”

Mark grimaced before chancing another glance towards the two women. But this time, there weren’t two, but  _ three. _

“So, what happens if your girlfriend joins them?”

Doug immediately looked up and found that, sure enough, Carol had joined the conversation. 

Across the way, they could hear Susan ask, “Does he ever-” before whispering something in Carol’s ear. They both watched for a moment as Carol listened and then shook her head. 

“No. I don’t think so,” she replied.

“Not even  _ once? _ ” Susan asked, aghast.

Carol shrugged and glanced towards Doug and Mark, who quickly busied themselves with paperwork. 

A few seconds later, Kerry rounded the corner of the desk and set a chart in front of Mark. 

“Mark, does this say ‘headache’ or ‘hemorrhoid’?” she asked, frowning at the clipboard. 

Mark glanced at it for half a second before chancing another glance at the gathered group of women.

“Uh, hemorrhoid.”

“That’s what I thought, given the choice of treatment, but I wanted to make sure.”

Mark nodded absently as Kerry tucked the chart back under her arm. She made to continue on when she noticed the peculiar behavior of the other Attendings and smirked. 

“Relax, boys. It’s not what you think,” she said with a chuckle. “They’re talking about restaurants.”

Both Mark and Doug tore their eyes away from Susan, Elizabeth, and Carol’s conversation to look at Kerry, their faces alight with both relief and trepidation. 

“They are?” Mark said hopefully. “

“I only heard it in passing, but I think so. It was something about... ‘not eating out enough’?” Kerry replied with a shrug. “I can only assume that means you need to step up date night.”

Mark and Doug exchanged glances, their lingering concern fading and changing to confusion about what recent dates had not been up to snuff. But, in looking at each other, they missed Kerry’s continued chuckling.

Mark was the first to look back at her, still oblivious.

“So, you think they just want us to go out more?” 

“Yeah…” Kerry said slowly, trying to fight the smirk back. “I’m  _ sure _ that’s what they meant.”

And with that, she turned away before she lost her composure. 

Her assurance had let Mark and Doug both breathe for a moment before Mark frowned. 

He leaned forward on the desk, dropping his voice so as not to be heard by any eavesdropping desk clerks or nurses.

“You don’t think she meant the… the  _ other _ meaning of that, right?” he whispered, glancing back at Elizabeth again.

Doug considered for a moment before chuckling and shaking his head. 

“Come on, Mark. It’s  _ Weaver _ . She wouldn’t make a joke like that,” Doug reassured him. “Besides, I doubt she even  _ knows  _ the other meaning. Trust me, that’s not what she meant.”

Mark nodded for a second, straightening up ever so slightly. But then almost immediately, he looked back at Doug, his eyes wide with fear. 

“Doug, she’s gay. That’s  _ exactly  _ what she meant.”

Kerry was still chuckling to herself a few minutes later when she happened to pass back by the conversation. 

A hand shot out to stop her and she turned to find Susan looking at her, eyes narrowed. 

“What’s the name of that deli near the Loop that you took me to?” she asked, her brow furrowing. “The Kosher one your ex-husband really liked?”

Kerry thought about it for a moment.

“Gerstein’s?”

Susan nodded as she remembered. 

“Yeah, it was that one. I remember that. They had the huge barrels of pickles.” Susan looked back at Carol and Elizabeth. “Suzie insisted in fishing her own pickle out only to remember once she’d already stuck her hand in that she hates pickles.”

“Why do you ask?” 

“Trying to expand some culinary horizons,” Susan remarked with a small shrug. “Apparently Mark and Doug aren’t too adventurous when it comes to food.”

“Oh my God,” Kerry said, her hand flying to her mouth. “You really  _ were _ talking about restaurants.” 

Susan frowned at the way Kerry’s eyes grew wide.

“Yeah...” Susan replied slowly. “Why? What did you think we were talking about?”

Kerry just shook her head, her cheeks growing red both in embarrassment and also under threat of more chuckling. 

“Oh, no reason,” she said, biting her lip. She glanced at Carol and Elizabeth. “But you two might thank me later.”


	3. Sand and Water

Jing-Mei and Abby watched the scene before them, both very impressed and also very, very concerned. Neither could tell if it was just the way Dr. Weaver was standing or if she had intentionally assumed a boxer’s stance, but either way, it was unlikely to end well. 

Jing-Mei was the first to look away. She glanced sideways towards the Attending closest to her. 

“Hey, Dr. Lewis?”

“Hmm?”

“Any chance you can put an end to that before someone gets hurt?”

Susan glanced up from the computer and followed her line of sight to where Kerry stood arguing with someone from the legal department (as she had done for the better part of the last half hour). 

“Why do you all assume I can do anything about her?” 

“Because she likes you the best?” Abby answered, raising an eyebrow. “And that means she listens to you.”

“God, I wish that were true,” Susan muttered

Still, despite the muttering and the eyeroll that followed it, Susan pulled herself up a little taller and started for the pair of department heads currently  _ butting _ heads. 

“Dr. Weaver, I  _ hear _ what you’re saying, but there is no legal recourse. Common-law marriage between two women does not exist in the state of Illinois. Without a Power of Attorney signed by the patient, the partner does not have any legal power.”

“And I hear  _ you _ , Mr. Reed, but it cannot be ethical to have a decision like this put in the hands of a family member who hasn’t spoken to her in decades instead of the women she has  _ lived with _ for decades.”

Reed rubbed a hand back and forth across his forehead. He heaved a sigh. 

“Kerry, don’t you think you’re upset because this is a bit…  _ personal _ to you?”

Susan managed to step in between them both just as Kerry inhaled deeply, her nostrils flaring and her fists clenching tightly. 

“Sorry, Kevin. Give us a sec.”

Reed nodded as Susan laid a firm hand on Kerry’s shoulder and forced her to step a few feet away.

“Susan, you can’t interrupt me like that,” Kerry spat. “I was in the middle of a conversation.”

“You looked like you were about to punch the living daylights out of him. Someone had to intervene.”

Kerry still looked mutinous, but stepping away  _ did _ give her room to breathe. 

She closed her eyes and then inhaled deeply. As she let the breath out, her shoulders relaxed ever so slightly. 

“It’s just not right,” she said quietly. “And I can’t figure out how to  _ make  _ it right.”

“Sometimes you can’t make it right,” Susan replied in an equally soft voice. “You know that.”

Kerry  _ did _ know that. But it didn’t mean she had to  _ like _ that. 

But her intention of beginning conversations with Legal about how to dutifully recognize same-gender partners in medical decision making was dashed when Susan informed her that Mark had cancer. 

They then held their breath for several months following, any thought that was not about patients or children directed towards Mark. 

Though they felt that they could breathe following the successful surgery that December, it meant that all that had been pushed away for those long months came crashing back all at once as the year came to a close.

Susan had been momentarily distracted from waiting for Elizabeth to call with an update by the refreshing steam of the shower. It had refreshed her so much that the distraction lingered all the way through getting dressed and heading downstairs. 

“Mommy, guess what!” Suzie greeted as Susan stepped into the living room where both girls were playing on the floor.

“What, my love?”

“Momma said that if it’s okay with you, I get to stay up to watch the ball drop! At midnight!”

“She said that, did she?” Susan said in a bemused tone as Suzie bounced her way into a hug. “Are you sure you can stay up that late?”

Suzie nodded excitedly and then released Susan to bounce her way back to the couch. 

Charlie was the next to greet her, this time without excited bouncing but with a happy screech and babbling. 

“Good morning to you too,” Susan said, smiling as she picked Charlie up and blew a raspberry onto the toddler’s cheek. “Are you going to stay up until midnight too, huh, Charlie?”

“Nooooo,” Suzie whined. “She’s too little!”

Susan chuckled at Suzie’s unspoken  _ She-can’t-do-it-because-then-it’s-not-special-for-me! _ Tone special to older siblings and started into the kitchen where Kerry was making breakfast.

“These are pretty,” Susan said as she passed a vase of flowers on the kitchen table. “What are they for?”

“They’re for you,” Kerry replied. She turned down the heat on the stove and then kissed Susan in greeting. “Because it’s New Year’s Eve.”

Susan stared for a second and then wilted. 

“Oh my God,” Susan moaned, shaking her head. “I’m so sorry, Kerry. I totally forgot. With Mark being sick and all, I didn’t think about it-”

“You don’t need to apologize,” Kerry said gently. “Trust me. I almost forgot too. I wasn’t even going to do anything, but I figured since everything went well a couple weeks ago, maybe it would be nice to celebrate a little.”

Susan smiled weakly. 

“Thank you,” she replied softly. “And I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

Kerry kissed Susan’s cheek again and, because of her resulting proximity to Charlie, kissed her on the cheek too. Charlie babbled happily in reply (and, thankfully, without trying to pull on anyone’s hair or nose in the process).

“You’ve already given me everything I could want.”

Susan smiled again, this time a little stronger. But as they smiled at each other, Susan’s brow furrowed as Kerry’s smile faltered a bit.

“”What’s wrong?”

Kerry opened her mouth to reply and then paused, thinking. She inhaled deeply. 

“There is… There is one thing that I want to talk about. Another part of the…”

Her words faded off. Susan was about to ask why when she saw Kerry glance towards the table. She followed the glance to a large yellow envelope on the table, carefully placed behind the flowers. 

Susan looked back to Kerry, whose expression was now very solemn. 

Susan’s chest clenched tightly at the thought of bad news, but before she could start tear up, Kerry heaved a sigh and then spoke.

“It’s not exactly the most romantic thing ever, but there is something I want us to do before we… before we relax and celebrate today.”

Susan nodded slowly, but the concern didn’t leave her face. She just followed Kerry to the kitchen table and sat down, settling Charlie on her lap as she did so. She pushed the vase back to see Kerry better (and to prevent Charlie from grabbing at them). 

Kerry’s hands were on the unopened envelope. She took another deep breath. 

“A couple months ago…” she began slowly. “A couple months ago, we had that patient who was dying but whose partner of thirty years couldn’t make her decisions for her. They’d spent their life together, but because they hadn’t signed a piece of paper, her wife couldn’t make a decision for her, even though she knew her best.

“And I know given the last couple months with-with Mark, this is probably the last thing you want to think about. But I think… I think it’s even more of a reason. Because…”

Kerry stopped, biting her lip as tears welled in her eyes. 

She reached a handle across the table, which Susan took. 

“I fully intend on spending the rest of my life with you,” Kerry said in a voice so low that Susan could barely hear her. “And-and God forbid something happens that would require a decision like that, but I… I wouldn’t want anyone else to make it.”

She let go of Susan’s hand to slide the papers out of the envelope. Even before Kerry turned them towards her, Susan could read the words across the top of the page:  _ Power of Attorney _

“I feel silly for not doing this sooner,” Kerry said as she slid the pages forward. “But better late than  _ too _ late.”

She then pulled another sheet out of the envelope. This time, the page was labeled  _ Last Will and Testament. _

“I don’t think you need to sign this one, but I wanted to make sure you knew about it,” Kerry explained. “I want you to be the executor of my will. A little bit of it is set aside for you with the rest split between the girls. After they turn eighteen.”

But Susan said nothing. She just stared at the  _ Power of Attorney _ document wordlessly for a long while. 

“If you don’t want to signit, you’re not obligated to. You’ve got more family than I do, so you’ve got more choices,” Kerry said in that same low voice, though this time it was tinged with a bit of hurt. “But I had the attorney draw them up for you just in case.”

Susan continued to say nothing. 

She thought of Elizabeth standing helplessly by as she watched Mark seize on the surgical table. 

Her mind flashed with the image of their roles changed, Mark watching as Elizabeth lay dying. Then, it was her watching Kerry and then it was Kerry watching her.

She thought about the previous Valentine’s Day, when Kerry had found her upstairs in L&D, face shiny with tears, thinking she had suffered the same fate as Carmen. 

What if she had? What if she had been hurt and ended up in a coma? What if there had been no chance of resuscitation? Who could she trust to know what she would have wanted and to respect her wishes, whatever they were?

Easy, she thought. The same person she would trust to raise her kids. 

“I don’t want it to be anyone else,” Susan said at long last. “I would want it to be you.”

Kerry nodded solemnly as Susan picked up the pen and signed on the dotted line.

They fell quiet again for a moment before Kerry extended her hand again. Susan took it and Charlie, who didn’t want to be left out, reached out and tried to grab their clasped hands. 

“What is it that the wedding vows end with?” Susan asked softly. “‘’Til death do us part?’”

“Yes.”

“Well, then.” Susan let out a sigh. “‘Til death do us part.”

“‘Til death do us part.”


	4. The 'Come to Jesus' Talk

Malucci gave the board a once over.

With Dr. Greene out on medical leave, he and the other residents had had their hands even fuller than usual and Chen was about to leave too to have her baby. This meant that the Attendings were going to be breathing down their backs even more. 

He didn’t worry about Dr. Kovac. For the most part, he was a pretty cool dude. He’d correct you when you were wrong, but he rarely ever blew his top, unlike certain  _ other _ Attendings. 

Not that he’d _admit_ _it_ to anyone, but the two people he was most afraid of in the ER were the two female Attendings. If you crossed the men, you’d get an earful, sure, but if you crossed the _women?_ You might as well just grab a shovel and start digging now. 

Dave had no sooner chuckled at the passing thought and started down the hall towards his next patient when an arm flew out to stop him. 

He blanched before the owner of said arm had even rounded on him. Any relief that he had been stopped by an  _ arm  _ and not a  _ crutch  _ was sapped immediately when he saw the look on Dr. Lewis’ face.

“Dr. Malucci, did you see the patient in Curtain Two?” she asked in a firm but even tone.

“Yeah.”

“What was your diagnosis?”

“She had a UTI. Confirmed it with the lab and everything,” Dave replied slowly, as if now questioning this. “Why?”

“What was your recommended course of action?” Dr. Lewis asked, raising an eyebrow. 

“Uh, Bactrim b.i.d. for ten days?” Dave offered.

Dr. Lewis shoved a chart towards him.

“Look at this chart and tell me why that’s not a good idea.”

Dave frowned, but took the metal clipboard nonetheless.

He read through it carefully, his brow furrowing with each line he read. But, just as he started to think she was crazy, he found the box she was referencing and deflated. 

“She has a sulfa allergy.”

“So, giving her Bactrim would cause what?” Dr. Lewis asked, her even tone taking on a slight edge of frustration.

“It’s a sulfa drug so it would cause an allergic reaction,” Dave replied. “Probably a severe one.”

“Exactly,” Dr. Lewis stated curtly. “So, what’s your alternative?”

“I’d have to make sure it’ll work on the strain, but probably Macrobid b.i.d. for seven days.”

Dr. Lewis nodded, but did not move. She just crossed her arms tightly over her chest. 

“I should not have to catch things like that, Dave,” Dr. Lewis said in a low voice. “As much as I’d hope that someone with a sulfa allergy would know the names of the medicines they can’t take, there’s no guarantee of that. And it’s not their responsibility. It’s yours.”

“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

Dave made to step sideways, but Dr. Lewis stepped in front of him, cutting him off. 

“I’m not done talking to you.”

Dave heaved a sigh, but nodded. 

“What year are you, Dave?”

“Uh… A third year?”

“Yes. You’re a third year. Which means,  _ technically _ , you could complete your residency at the end of this year,” Dr. Lewis stated firmly. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t. Because you’re not ready to.”

Dave closed his eyes. 

He didn’t need this today, he thought. He’d already gotten chewed out by some woman on the El today and had gotten told off by a patient  _ and _ by a nurse. He didn’t need this again.

“But I think you could be ready. If you straighten up.”

Dave opened his eyes and looked up at Dr. Lewis. He blinked in surprise. 

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve got the makings of a really good doctor, Dave,” Dr. Lewis said sincerely. “You know your diagnoses. You know the differentials. You’ve got a lot of really good knowledge. You just don’t apply it well. You’re sloppy.

“Missing a patient’s drug allergy? That’s  _ med student _ stuff. Hell, it’s not even med student stuff. We might expect it from a med student, but I think anyone off the street could tell you that you shouldn’t give someone something they’re allergic to.”

Dr. Lewis narrowed her eyes at him as if observing him closely. 

“What do you care about, Dave?”

“What?”

“What do you care about?” Dr. Lewis repeated. “What drives you? What motivates you to do things? What gets you here every morning?”

“Well, if the weather’s nice, I ride my bike-”

“Don’t make jokes,” Dr. Lewis snapped. “I’m serious. What do you care about, Dave?”

Dave considered this for a moment and then shrugged. 

“I don’t know.”

“There has to be something. And I need you to find what that something is.”

Dr. Lewis inhaled deeply for a moment, as if steeling herself. 

“What we do here? It’s not a game. We tend to treat being a doctor like some kind of reward for getting through undergrad and getting through med school, but it’s not a reward. It’s a privilege and I need you to start fucking acting like it. 

“Other jobs? They’re different. You mess up the computer code or lose a couple dollars on the stock market… You get try again tomorrow. You have a chance to fix it. But we don’t work in money or goods. We work in lives. There is never a guarantee of a second chance, so you need to get it right the first time. 

“And in the ER? We have less chances than most of our colleagues in other specialties We’ve gotta work fast and sometimes, we’re just not fast enough. And because of that, we need  _ something _ to keep us going. To make us come in every day. To keep us in this, because if we’re not, lives are at stake. 

“So, I will ask you one more time: What do you care about, Dave?”

Dave gave this a good long moment of thought. 

The truth was that he knew the answer. He had known it since the first time she asked, but he didn’t want to say it. 

And why should he? he wondered. After all, it wasn’t like  _ his _ dad had every thought about it like that. 

But, then again, he didn’t want to be like his dad. 

“I have a son,” Dave admitted in a small, almost timid voice. “He’s three. He lives with his mom most of the time but… but...”

Dave sucked in a breath. Allowing himself to say the words out loud also threatened to make him cry. 

“But he’s the best thing that I’ve ever done with my life.”

Maybe he imagined it, but he could have sworn Dr. Lewis’ expression softened  _ just _ a bit.

“Okay,” she said, nodding. “If your son is what you care about, then from now on, I want you to treat every patient like they are your son. 

“I want you to treat them with the same care, kindness, and precision that you would hope from someone treating  _ your _ child. Even if that means you need to take an extra second to make sure you’re right or consult with another physician to get their opinion… I want you to do whatever it takes, alright?”

Then, in proving he hadn’t imagined the change in her expression, Dr. Lewis gave him a small smile. 

“If you’re a good dad to him, he’ll always be proud of you,” she said simply. “You get good at this and he’ll be even more proud.”

_ A few months later… _

Mark, Kerry, and Luka were all already seated around the table in the lounge when Susan walked in. 

Naturally, her eyes grew wide as she slowly took her seat as well. 

“Oh no. She’s gathered us all here together. Someone’s getting fired.” Before anyone else could negate the statement, Susan immediately looked at Kerry and raised her hand. “I vote Mark.”

Luka also raised a hand. 

“I  _ also _ vote Mark.”

Mark, who was seated in the middle of them, looked between them both and scoffed, before turning (with a bit of a pleading look in his eye) to Kerry.

“No one is getting fired,” Kerry said, waving them all away. “And even if someone was, I wouldn’t fire Mark.”

“Thank you, Kerry.”

“Mostly because you’ve been here longer than I have and it would be very weird to fire you.”

_ “I’ve _ been here longer than you have,” Susan cut in, her eyes wide and her tone serious. “It wouldn’t be weird to fire  _ me?” _

“It would be weird to fire you for  _ other _ reasons,” Kerry snapped. “But no one is getting fired. Put that out of your heads.”

The other Attendings did as they were told, but there was no denying the lingering suspicion with which they exchanged glances. (And there was  _ definitely _ no denying that when Kerry folded her hands on the table in front of her.)

“I just spoke with Maggie Doyle and let me know that she is leaving at the end of May,” Kerry explained. “She wanted to thank me and thank all of you for having her as Chief Resident for not one but  _ two  _ years, but she says it’s time for her to look for something new. Which means that we are going to be in need of a new Chief Resident. And I want all of your input.”

“Isn’t it just going to come down to whoever you want anyway?” Susan asked, sitting back in her chair. 

“No. This can be a democracy,” Kerry offered. But, then she shrugged. “Unless you all choose wrong, in which case,  _ yes _ , it will just come down to whoever I want.”

“Who’s even eligible?” Mark asked.

“Carter, Chen…” Kerry counted the options off on her fingers. “And Malucci.”

“Oh. Well, then it’s Carter.”

“I agree,” Kovac said, nodding. “Carter.”

Kerry looked to Susan, who rolled her eyes. 

“You even have to ask?”

Kerry breathed a small sigh of relief. 

“Good, good. I also wanted it to be Carter. I just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page.”

“Out of curiosity,” Mark began, “would you have  _ actually _ considered Malucci for Chief Resident?”

Kerry let out a scoffing chuckle. 

“No.  _ Well... _ ” she said, shaking her head. She stopped to think for a moment. “I wouldn’t say  _ no _ , because he’s been a lot better lately. I don’t which one of you yelled at him, or  _ if _ one of you yelled at him, but he’s certainly stepped it up a lot in the last few months. 

“So, I guess, perhaps if he had started doing this  _ sooner _ \- and if he wasn’t competing against Carter and Chen - then maybe we’d be having a different conversation.”


	5. Saturday Morning at Home

Roxanne stepped cautiously into the foyer, peering around for Carter. She didn’t know how on earth he managed to score a place as nice as this for less than a thousand dollars a month, but she was  _ very _ impressed nonetheless.

“Who are  _ you _ ?” 

Roxanne glanced around for a moment, trying to find the source of the voice. For a second, she thought she must be imagining things. That was until she happened to glance down to find a preschooler looking up at her, her head cocked to one side in question.

“Oh, I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t see you there.” She offered a tentative hand (as she was not sure if a preschooler would know why she was doing so). “I’m Roxanne.”

“I’m Suzie,” Suzie replied, shaking Roxanne’s hand but not looking any less suspicious of the newcomer. “Are you Carter’s girlfriend?”

Roxanne chuckled. 

“No, I’m Carter’s boyfriend,” she joked. 

But, to her surprise, Suzie just shrugged. 

“Okay.”

“That was a joke,” Roxanne said quickly. “Obviously, I’m his  _ girlfriend.  _ Because I’m a girl- I’m a woman.”

Suzie just shrugged again. 

“Okay.”

Roxanne was ready to question why this young girl was so ready to accept whatever she said, but instead she felt there was something more pressing that Carter had seemingly omitted up until this point.

“I didn’t know that Carter had a daughter,” Roxanne said with a half-pleasant, half-concerned smile. 

She couldn’t deny the relief that came when Suzie gave her a look of utmost confusion. 

“Carter’s not my dad,” Suzie said, her little brow furrowing. “I don’t  _ have _ a dad.”

“Aww. I’m sorry, honey,” Roxanne apologized, frowning. 

This only served to deepen Suzie’s confusion. 

“Why are you sorry?”

“Well, you said that you don’t have a dad.”

“I don’t have a dad,” Suzie confirmed. “I have two moms!”

Roxanne blinked, but then she nodded slowly. 

“I see, I see.” She let out a sigh of relief. “Carter’s just babysitting then?”

“No. He’s in his room.” Suzie said, shaking her head. “Mommy’s doing laundry and Momma’s asleep.”

Roxanne’s confusion returned en force, but when she asked Suzie if she’d go get Carter for her, the girl happily obliged. Seeing Carter helped ease the confusion a bit, but instead of that same relief she’d felt a second ago, this time it was replaced with frustration.

“Hey. Sorry I wasn’t upstairs,” he said as he hugged her in greeting. “I was reading and lost track of time.”

“Oh, it’s fine,” Roxanne said, waving him away. “I was just kind of confused. When you said that your landlady lived upstairs, I thought that meant she lived  _ upstairs _ .”

“Well, she does.  _ They  _ do. They live up here and I live in the basement.”

“In the same apartment.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“You live in an apartment with two middle-aged lesbians and their daughter?” Roxanne asked in a tone that clearly conveyed both her confusion and her hope that he could clarify all of this in a way that made more sense. 

“Not quite. I live with  _ one _ middle-aged lesbian as well as a slightly younger bisexual and their daughter,” he said as he started down the hallway. He let out a chuckle. “I said that once and they corrected me.”

“Bisexual?” Roxanne whispered as they drew even with the kitchen. “Doesn’t that mean that she’s attracted to both men  _ and _ women?”

“I guess,” Carter said with a shrug. “But I mean, they’ve been together for a couple years now. Exclusively.”

“I just…” Roxanne inhaled deeply and glanced around. “I just don’t know how I feel about that.”

“Trust me, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“I do trust you,” she said sincerely. “But you understand why I’d find it…  _ weird _ that one of the women you live with likes men?”

“I don’t  _ like _ men, but I am sometimes attracted to them.”

Roxanne and Carter both looked towards the open basement door, which Susan closed with her foot once she and the laundry basket in her arms had made their way through. 

Color rose fast in Roxanne’s cheeks. 

“Sorry-”

“Yeah, me too,” Susan said with a shrug as she started towards the living room. “Just goes to show it’s not a choice, right?”

Roxanne gave a sheepish chuckle, but Susan just smiled and waved her away.

“”I’m Roxanne.”

“Susan. And I think you’ve already met Suzie.”

At the sound of her name, Suzie sped out of her room and skidded to a halt at her mother’s side. 

“She thought Carter was my dad.”

“Did she?” Susan laughed at Suzie’s look of bewilderment. But then she looked up at Carter, her expression changing to one of surprise, as if she’d never given the idea any though before. “Well…”

Roxanne (and Carter) blanched at her implication, which made Susan grin broadly.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” she said quickly, trying to reassure them in between chuckles. “Suzie’s adopted.”

Both breathed a sigh of relief and then joined in the laughter. 

The door to the master bedroom opened behind Susan and her attention was drawn to it. Roxanne and Carter seemed like they were going to continue on towards the basement, but Roxanne paused out of curiosity, halting Carter as well.

Kerry blinked hard at the light of the living room. This, coupled with the fact that she was still in her robe, would have made them think that she’d just gotten out of bed, but her hair was wet, indicating otherwise.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Susan greeted as she crossed around the couch to wrap Kerry in a hug. “I didn’t think you were going to get out of bed today.”

“I took a shower to see if it would make me feel better,” Kerry mumbled into Susan’s shoulder. “It didn’t. But now I’m up.”

Susan pulled away to observe Kerry better, her brow furrowing. 

“You want coffee?”

“Do you mind?” Kerry asked quietly, grimacing slightly.

Susan replied by shaking her head and kissing Kerry on the cheek. 

“You sit down. I’ll make a pot.” 

She kissed Kerry again and then released her. She paused for a second, ready to offer Kerry an arm if she needed it, but Kerry just stepped around her towards the couch, leaning heavily on her crutch. 

As Susan started back towards the kitchen, she called out, “Suzie, hug Momma.”

Suzie, who had settled on the floor, popped up from her seat and all but saluted in eagerness as she turned for the couch. 

It was this eagerness that caused Susan to look back and snatch her daughter of the air mid-leap.

“I said, ‘ _ hug _ Momma.’ Not ‘jump on Momma.’”

“I can do both!” Suzie whined, trying to wriggle her way out of Susan’s grip.

“Not today you can’t,” Susan replied, putting Suzie back down onto the floor. “Momma doesn’t feel good today and we don’t to make Momma feel worse.”

Suzie stopped trying to release herself from Susan’s grip, but looked thoroughly put-out. Susan leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.

“Wait until Momma feels better.  _ Then _ , you can jump on her.”

Kerry frowned at Susan, narrowing her eyes. Suzie appeared placated by this though and climbed up on the couch next to Kerry and threw her arms around her. (No jumping required.)

Susan let out a sigh, a smile tugging at her mouth at the sight of Kerry and Suzie on the couch. Then, she turned back towards the kitchen.

“See?” Carter whispered to Roxanne. “Like I said. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tbh I totally forgot Roxanne was a character until I got this idea.  
> Anyways, I hope you’re enjoying this, as I know I am. And I promise not to do too much sad stuff for at least couple more chapters. (But I will at some point because I’m legally required to in every story I write.)  
> Anyways, thanks for reading! Until next time.


	6. A Simple Twist of Fate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter features discussion of abuse and assault. 

Susan kept impulsively checking the clock on the nightstand beside her, though she wasn’t quite sure why. It wasn’t like checking was actually going to make time go any faster, nor would it make her more likely to fall asleep. 

And how could she? Now that she knew Mark’s tumor could be back, there was no way she was going to be able to calm her thoughts enough to fall asleep. And by now, she was too tired to try and stop them from jumping to the worst case scenario. 

_ Brrrrnnng. Brrrrrnng. _

The cell phone that lay charging on the nightstand beside the intrepid alarm clock rang loudly. 

Susan sat bolt upright. She tugged the charge out before flipping it open.

“Hello?”

At the sound of the cell phone’s ring and the movement beside her, Kerry awoke and rolled over. She was still groggy, but was happy at least that the nausea from bagel-induced food poisoning had not returned. 

(Though Susan had warned the other staff of an impending lecture should they try and eat any of the bagels and cream cheese a drug rep had dropped off that morning, Kerry had told them she’d forgo her policy on not eating the  kickbacks food that was dropped off for them just that once. It had been in part because they looked so good, but mostly because Suzie had learned how to use the snooze button on her alarm clock and the rush to get out the door meant Kerry had not eaten any breakfast.)

“Abby- Abby, slow down, slow down,” Susan instructed into the phone. “Are you- Did you call the police?”

There was a pause as Susan listened. 

“Well, did you at least go to the hospital?” Susan asked before letting out a small huff. “Abby, you need to-”

At this, Kerry too sat up. She clicked on the lamp, which made them both recoil.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Susan said quickly. “I’ll be right there.”

Susan listened for another brief moment before bidding Abby goodbye and snapping the phone closed. At once, she started climbing out of bed and pulling on a pair of sweatpants over the shorts she had been sleeping in. 

“What’s going on?” Kerry asked with a yawn. 

“I… I don’t really know yet. But it won’t take that long. Just go back to sleep.”

Susan rifled through the dresser for a second before pulling out the first sweatshirt she could find. She pulled it over head, not caring that the tightness of said sweatshirt was due to the fact that it was not her University of Chicago sweatshirt, but rather Kerry’s Northwestern one.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ll tell you in the morning. Don’t worry about it now,” Susan said quietly as she crossed around the foot of the bed towards the bedroom door. “Just hug my pillow and go back to sleep.”

Kerry blinked a few times before she clicked off the lamp and laid back down. Susan heard the sound of Kerry pulling the pillow towards her and smiled slightly, before a thought occurred to her.

“Wait, you’re sick. On second thought, please  _ don’t _ hug my pillow.”

Susan reached over and pulled the pillow out of Kerry’s grasp. She tossed it aside, which earned her a very small disappointed sound that she would have mistaken for a cat if she hadn’t known better. 

At the sound, Susan rolled her eyes and kissed Kerry on the cheek before turning back for the door.

Abby called her again to ask if they could meet at a 24-hour diner a few streets away instead of at the apartment. Susan obliged and found herself almost relieved about the change, given that meeting in a public place both ensured Abby’s safety as well as the fact that Susan was less likely to lose it upon seeing her. (It didn’t stop her chest from clenching painfully though.)

Abby rose from the booth, which was tucked back in the corner. Susan started to hug her, but her physician instincts took over and made her start observing the injuries. 

“Oh my God, Abby,” Susan said as soon as she got close enough to see the black eye and bleeding. “You need to go to the ER.”

“It looks worse than it is,” Abby said, trying (and failing) to reassure her. 

“And it looks pretty bad,” Susan replied sincerely as she continued to look Abby over. “You need to go get checked out. To make sure nothing’s broken.”

“What I need now is to go to sleep.” Abby closed her eyes and sighed, wincing slightly as the bruise on her cheek stung.

“You can sleep in the ER.”

“Susan, I wouldn’t have called you if I thought you were just going to make me go to the hospital,” Abby stated firmly. “I’ll be fine. I just… Can I just please come stay with you tonight?”

Susan inhaled deeply, but, given that it was almost two o’clock in the morning and she was exhausted, she just sighed and nodded. 

Abby let out her own sigh of relief and picked up the overnight bad she had packed in anticipation of going somewhere else for the night (even if it meant she checked into a hotel). 

Once Abby had paid for the cup of coffee she had while waiting for Susan to arrive, they made their way out to Susan’s car and then on the freeway towards Oak Park. 

“We haven’t finished the basement here yet, so the couch will have to do,” Susan whispered as she unlocked the front door and led Abby into the house. 

Abby mumbled a word of thanks and followed Susan’s lead of kicking off her shoes before stepping into the living room. 

“Bathroom’s over there. Kitchen’s through there.” Susan said quietly, pointing to a door on the far end of the living room. “There are ice packs in the freezer if you need them and a big bottle of Tylenol in the top right drawer in the bathroom. I’d stay up later, but I’m on at seven.”

“You’re on at seven?” Abby asked, furrowing her brow as much as the swelling would allow. “You should have said something. I could have called someone else-”

“But you called me,” Susan finished. “Abby, it’s fine. I promise.”

Not like she was really sleeping  _ anyway _ , Susan thought. 

But rather than dwell on that, she just gave Abby a tired smile, which Abby could make out even amidst the shadows of the dark living room.

“If you need anything else, let me know, okay?” Susan said, touching her arm encouragingly before yawning. “I’m going to go back upstairs and hopefully not have to fight my pillow away from Kerry.”

Abby chuckled and took a seat on the couch. She muttered a word of thanks and laid down, her eyes closing and sleep overtaking her the moment her head hit the pillow.

Susan was up and gone before Abby awoke later that morning, meaning she was awoken instead by the sound of feet and voices coming down the stairs. 

From where she lay on the couch, she could just see the end of the staircase.

“Come on, come on. Keep going,” Kerry’s voice instructed from higher up the stairs.

Suzie was leading the way, Kerry’s crutch held up like a baton in front of her. Kerry followed closely behind, Charlie hoisted up on her right hip.

“Can we have eggs for breakfast?”

“Not today. It’s too late for eggs.”

Suzie let out a whine as she rounded the corner at the bottom of the stairs and then stopped, cocking her head in question.

“Hi, Abby,” she greeted in a very confused tone.

Abby waved in reply.

Kerry, who had not heard the greeting nor had noticed their houseguest, was about to nudge Suzie onwards when she too noticed Abby sitting on the couch. 

“Hi, Abby,” Kerry greeted in almost the exact same tone as her oldest daughter. “When did you get here?”

“Around two,” she replied. “Susan picked me up.”

Kerry nodded and urged Suzie forward, but Suzie just looked at Abby curiously.

“What happened to your face?”

_ “Suzie.” _

Suzie looked up at Kerry.

“I just want to know!” she whined. 

Kerry shook her head and made to put Charlie down. But as soon as she bent forward, Charlie screeched and buried her head in Kerry’s neck. Kerry rolled her eyes and straightened up, wincing in pain in her hip at the action with added weight from Charlie as well as pain in her stomach (which apparently wasn’t as over with as she’d thought).

“You need to eat breakfast. The bus will be here any minute.”

“Can’t you just take me to school today?” Suzie moaned.

But Kerry just shook her head and pointed towards the kitchen. Suzie gave in and made for the kitchen table. She set Kerry’s crutch against the wall before sulking her way into her seat. 

“Abby, would you care to join us for some cereal?” Kerry asked as she too started for the kitchen.

“Uh, sure.”

She rose from the couch and followed the others in.

Suzie was (glumly) eating Fruit Loops while Charlie had plain dry Cheerios on the tray of her high chair. Kerry kept casting them both glances out of the corner of her eye as is waiting for an eruption from one or both of them. 

There was an empty bowl and spoon waiting for Abby, indicating she had a choice in what cereal she had. Figuring she hadn’t had Fruit Loops in who knows how long, she settled into the chair and poured a bowl for herself. 

“Why did Mommy pick you up and bring you here?” Suzie asked in between her (glum) spoonfuls of cereal. 

“I, uh…” Abby took another bite of cereal to give herself a chance to think. “I fell last night. And I needed help, so I called your mom.”

“What did you fall over?” 

“Uh… I fell over a rug,” Abby lied. “In my house.”

To her surprise, Suzie nodded. 

“That’s why all of our rugs are stuck to the floor,” Suzie informed her. “So nobody falls over them.”

Abby smiled and continued eating.

Kerry glanced at the clock and, sure enough, as soon as she did so, they could all hear the distant groaning of a school bus down the street. 

“Alright, Suzie. Go put your shoes on and get your backpack,” Kerry instructed, nodding towards the front door.

“But I want to talk to Abby more!”

“And I’m sure she’ll still be here when you get home this afternoon,” Kerry said, handing Suzie her lunchbox out of the fridge.

“Actually, I won’t be,” Abby said quietly, more to Kerry than to Suzie. “I’m on at three.”

Kerry looked at her over the rim of her glasses and then shook her head. 

“No, I don’t think you are,” she said simply. At Abby’s questioning frown, she raised an eyebrow and said, “You shouldn’t be working after a fall like that.”

Before Abby could respond, Kerry passed her towards the front door, where Suzie, much more excited knowing their guest would be staying with them longer, was happily pulling on her shoes. 

Abby watched Kerry help Suzie with her backpack, kiss her on the forehead, and then usher her out the door. Kerry waited for a moment, watching the girl skip her way onto the bus, before closing the front door. 

“I can go into work today,” Abby said as Kerry returned to the kitchen. “Really. It’s like I told Susan. It looks worse than it is.”

“Abby, the only way you’re going to the ER today is if I’m taking you in to be seen,” Kerry stated firmly.

She took Suzie’s empty seat at the table and began observing Abby with the same practiced professional eye that Susan had at the diner.

“May I?” she asked hesitantly, raising her hands as if to touch Abby’s face.

Abby let out a sigh, but nodded. 

Kerry scooted the chair closer to her. She gently felt around Abby’s eye and nose, noting where she was touching when Abby hissed in pain.

“Well, nothing’s broken,” Kerry remarked as she finished her exam. “But you should still go to the hospital if you haven’t already.”

Abby just shook her head. Kerry’s brow furrowed slightly. 

“This wouldn’t have anything to do with your neighbor, would it?”

Abby did not respond, but given the way she seemed to look at everything but her, Kerry felt she had her answer. 

“Did you call the police?” Abby gave a half-shrug, to which Kerry nodded slowly and let out a deep breath. “You need to call them. You need to report this.”

“I don’t think it’s going to happen again,” Abby said, letting out a deep breath of her own. “Besides, they never seem to have done much when we’ve called before.”

Kerry gave a small shrug of acknowledgement.

“Admittedly, it seems that they can’t do much in domestic violence cases. But this isn’t that. You’re not his wife. You’re his neighbor.” Kerry cocked her head slightly. “Did you lose consciousness at any point?”

“Yes. But he just punched me. He didn’t do…” Abby shook her head slightly. “He didn’t do anything else if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“It  _ wasn’t _ what I was thinking actually, but that raises a good point,” Kerry said slowly. “All the more reason to go to the hospital.”

Abby didn’t bother to shake her head again, but just closed her eyes. She felt a soft hand cover hers and opened them again to find Kerry looking at her with great concern.

“I won’t make you go to the hospital, but I  _ do _ really think you should call the police,” she said in a low voice. “If you want me to, I can call the babysitter to come sit with Charlie and take you over there. And you can have the police meet us there.”

Knowing it was no use to argue (and she didn’t have the energy to even if there was), Abby just nodded weakly. Kerry nodded in reply and squeezed her hand gently. 

Charlie let out an angry grunt before there was the sound of Cheerios hitting the floor. Kerry rolled her eyes and gave Abby one last concerned smile before getting up to take care of the spilled cereal and the one who spilled it. 

Abby took her time to finish her cereal before taking her bowl and spoon to the sink. She considered asking Kerry what she should do with it, but she was preoccupied with negotiating alternative food options with a hangry toddler, so Abby just rinsed it out and set it in the sink before starting back for the living room.

“Abby?”

Abby turned. She tried to raise her eyebrows in question, but the swelling around her eye would not allow that, so instead she just asked, “Yeah?”

“It should go without saying, but in case it doesn’t, you are more than welcome to stay her as long as you need to,” Kerry informed her sincerely. 

“Thanks,” Abby replied with a slight smile. “It shouldn’t be long though. I’ll probably go back tonight. It’s just…”

Abby let out a sigh. 

“Of course. Whatever is most comfortable for you. I just wanted to make sure you knew that.” Kerry said, nodding. “I know our questions and everything probably overwhelm you, but we just want to make sure you’re safe.”

Abby nodded. 

“I appreciate that.”

“Of course. If we can’t look out for our own, than who can we look out for?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I say we weren't going to get sad yet? I lied. Well, I didn't _lie_ given that this isn't really _sad_... but it is definitely a lot heavier than I originally planned for a next chapter. Oh well. We will return to something a lot more light hearted on the next one or two or maybe three chapters. 
> 
> Hope all is well. Until next time.


	7. Postpartum Exhaustion

For most of the nearly five years that Mark and Kerry had worked together, the trauma room had been a source of immense (and intense) competition. 

It had really peaked in 1996 when they’d been competing for that tenure spot, but in the end it didn’t really matter the outcome. Once Kerry took over, she’d been able to use Carol’s clinic to save the ER money and then re-allocated the savings towards the staff, effectively guaranteeing his continued employment without the need for University involvement (or, God forbid, having to lecture in a classroom). 

Still, even without a tangible reason for competition between them, whenever the ER doors burst open, it still always felt like a race against time. Whoever made it there first was in control and for Mark, even though he had absolutely  _ no  _ interest in taking on additional formal leadership responsibilities, every once in a while, he felt the need to re-establish the fact that he was  _ also  _ an Attending Physician.

He’d been considering this all day, as not once had he managed to beat Kerry to the trauma room for any of the traumas that had arrived, but there was something…  _ different  _ about today. 

He’d purposely hung back the last time paramedics had shown up to watch Kerry respond to it and he’d gotten visual proof of what he’d suspected: Today, she  _ hadn’t  _ been trying to beat him to the trauma room. 

In fact, she almost appeared like she hadn’t been  _ trying _ to do anything. It was almost as if she was on auto-pilot. Her eyes appeared half-glazed over and her actions machine-like. She hadn’t yelled at anyone or engaged in conversation with anybody or, hell, even sat down for any longer than it took her to enter something into the computer. 

It was to the point that if Mark hadn’t a suspicion as to why she was acting like this, he’d have assumed she’d suffered a great personal loss or had received devastating news.

The ER doors burst open again as he stood at the desk contemplating, and yet again, Kerry just turned automatically to follow it. Mark followed too, catching up easily as they made their way into Trauma Two.

“Vitals?” Kerry asked in a nearly-monotone voice. 

“BP 180/114. Pulse 110, but weak and thready,” Pickman replied as Lydia and Chuny began wrapping the man’s arm in a cuff. “His wife said he woke up today and was off-balance.”

“She said he was slurring his words too,” Zadro added. “Probably stroke.”

Kerry nodded, despite the fact that the paramedics had not finished listing off the vitals. Mark touched her lightly on the shoulder. 

She looked up at him and blinked like it was the first time she’d noticed he was even at work that day. (And, to be perfectly honest, it probably was.)

“Hey, Kerry, why don’t you let me take this?”

Her brow furrowed just slightly. 

“Why?”

“Well, you’ve been running traumas all day,” he said in a low voice. “Why don’t you let me take this one? So you can take a break.”

Every ER staff member in the vicinity flinched on Mark’s behalf in anticipation of what was sure to happen next. But to all of their surprise (Mark included), she blinked again and then nodded.

“Yeah. Yeah, you take it,” she said slowly. 

She stepped back to let Mark take over and then left without another word. 

As she started her way back to Admit, she thought about how Mark was right. She  _ did  _ need a break. 

And, as soon as she allowed the thought to take hold, she suddenly became very aware of her body in a way she hadn’t seemed to all day.

She was limping much worse than usual. Had she remembered to take her medicine this morning? Her stomach was growling. Had she eaten lunch? She felt heavy with exhaustion. Had she even slept at all last night?

Kerry was sure she’d only started to consider these questions when Mark appeared at her side. 

Had he gotten done with the trauma that fast? How long had she been standing here? Where  _ was _ she even standing?

“Kerry, are you okay?” he asked, his expression and tone full of concern. “You’ve seemed kind of off all day.”

Under normal circumstances, a statement like this would have earned Mark an earful, but Kerry was too exhausted to even consider telling him off. 

“I’m just tired,” she found herself saying, surprised at her own candor. “Haven’t been sleeping much.”

Mark nodded knowingly. 

Susan still had about a month left on her maternity leave, meaning they were still down an Attending. It would be tiring enough just picking up the slack at work without also having to run the department  _ and  _ take care of an infant in the off-hours. 

“You want to head out early?” Mark asked cautiously. “Go home and take a nap.”

This question was another that could potentially earn him an earful, but it didn’t. Kerry just shook her head. 

“I’ve got a report due by the end of the day that’s only half-finished and a department head meeting at three thirty.”

Mark nodded, but his head was still running through other options.

“Are you off this weekend?”

Kerry paused to think. 

“I’m off at seven on Friday night and then not on again until late on Sunday,” she thought out loud in reply. “Why?”

“How about Elizabeth and I take the girls out on Saturday? So you and Susan can take a break?”

“What do mean ‘take them out’?”

“Babysit them. You know, take the girls out for the day. Or we could stay at home while you guys go out.”

Kerry considered this for a moment. 

“What weekend is this?”

“Um…” Mark mentally calculated the answer. “Friday is the 14th.”

“And…” Kerry heaved a sigh. “And what month are we in?”

Mark’s concern for Kerry’s mental well-being deepened so fast that it felt more like a plummet.

“April?” he replied slowly.

Kerry took a second to think about this and then blinked. Then, a little bit more confidently, she nodded. 

“Yeah. If you could come over Saturday that would be great.”

Mark nodded and let Kerry continue on towards (hopefully) taking care of whatever of her basic needs she required at the moment.

That night, he got a phone call from a much-too-excited sounding Susan. 

“Okay, so I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth here because you  _ offered _ to come over this weekend _ , _ ” she said, struggling to keep her tone even. “But,  _ theoretically _ , how much money would I have to bribe you with to stay overnight? I’m willing to part with up to $100. $150 if you bring Elizabeth with you.”

Elizabeth had been easier to persuade than Mark had expected. She’d voiced concern over leaving his father alone for a night, but he had assured her that he’d run home and check on him once the girls were asleep. 

He figured a little bit of distance between him and his dad was likely good for their relationship (and more than a little bit of a preventative measure against patricide, as David Greene had just become nurse-less… again.)

“But  _ why _ do you have to go?” Suzie whined as Mark and Elizabeth stepped inside the door to the Weaver-Lewis's new house. “Why can’t I go with you?”

“Because, honey,” Susan replied in a tired voice, “Mommy and Momma are going to go do grown-up things that are really boring.”

“What  _ kind _ of grown-up things?” Suzie asked fiercely.

“Taxes,” Susan replied. “We have to go do taxes. Which is a lot of math and numbers and is really, really boring.”

“But it’s Momma’s  _ birthday _ .”

“Which means it’s also Tax Day,” Susan stated. “Momma’s birthday is the same day as Tax Day. Every year.”

Suzie dropped onto the couch, pouting, just as Kerry rounded the corner out of the kitchen, Charlie held to her chest.

“Is Charlie going with you?” Suzie asked as Kerry laid her in the bassinet and started gathering things up.

“Nope. Just Momma and I,” Susan replied. 

She stepped forward towards the couch and scooped Suzie up into her arms before giving her a big squeeze. When she pulled away, she kissed Suzie’s cheek and then blew a raspberry on it, which seemed to lessen Suzie’s pout at least a  _ little  _ bit. 

“We’ll be back in the morning,” she said softly as she brushed a lock of hair out of Suzie’s face. 

“Afternoon,” Kerry corrected.

“ _ Afternoon _ ,” Susan repeated, rolling her eyes. “You be good for Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Mark, okay?”

Suzie nodded. Susan raised her eyebrows seriously. 

“Suzie, be good.”

“I  _ will  _ be.”

Susan gave her another serious look before kissing her cheek once more and setting her down. 

It was only once Suzie was situated that either Susan or Kerry noticed that Mark and Elizabeth had arrived. However, given that Suzie’s appeasement of her mothers’ leaving was a time-limited thing, they barely had the chance to greet them, give them a quick run-through of house rules, and showed them how to change Charlie’s diaper with the Pavlik harness on before kissing both girls once more and shouting their goodbyes as they rushed out the door. 

Suzie immediately grabbed Mark’s hand and led him further into the living room, but Elizabeth hung a few steps behind. 

She looked around at the dark blue walls and brown trim overhanging the half wall between the living room and the kitchen. As she stepped further inside, she could see the dining room that jutted slightly out from the rest of the house painted a deep red that went well with the brown of the dining set. 

“This is a  _ very _ nice house,” she mused as she made her way further in to sit down with Mark and Suzie on the floor. “Perhaps we should drive around this area tomorrow after we leave to see what listings there are out here.”

Mark frowned. 

“What for? I’ve already got an apartment.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. She turned her attention to Suzie. 

“Do you like your new house, Suzie?”

Suzie looked around as if she hadn’t considered this before. Then, she just shrugged. 

“Yeah. I think it’s bigger than our old house,” she said. “My room’s upstairs now. And I have my own bathroom… Well, I’ll have to share it with Charlie when she gets big enough. But for right now, it’s  _ mine _ .”

“Alright, then,” Elizabeth replied, nodding. “And what about Charlie, hmm? Do you enjoy having a little sister?”

Suzie’s eyes flicked towards the bassinet where Charlie lay sleeping and shrugged again. 

“She’s fine. She doesn’t do much. She just sleeps all the time. And when she wakes up, she’s hungry, so Mommy feeds her, and then she just goes back to sleep. Sometimes, Mommy puts her on a pillow on the ground so she can lay on her tummy. But that’s it.”

“I’m sure she’ll get more fun when she gets bigger,” Mark said as he started looking through the toy box. 

“Yeah. I guess.” Suzie paused for a moment and then looked up at Elizabeth curiously. “Are you guys gonna have a baby?”

Mark turned to look at Elizabeth so fast that he dropped the toy box lid, only managing to catch it a split second before it slammed shut.

He and Elizabeth exchanged wide-eyed glances for a moment, before they looked back to Suzie. 

“If we do…” Elizabeth began slowly, glancing towards Mark. “...It would probably be a while. Before that happened. But it probably won’t.”

“Why not?” Suzie asked. “Everyone else is having babies.”

Though the comment sounded like the very same ones her mother had given her the last time she’d been in town, Elizabeth had far less of a visceral reaction when Suzie said it. 

“We don’t know what’ll happen,” Elizabeth said finally, offering Suzie (and Mark) a shrug. “We’ll just have to see.”

Suzie nodded in understanding, and then perked up again. 

“Maybe, if you do have a baby, you can have  _ two _ babies at the same time. Like Aunt Carol and Uncle Doug had!” Then, Suzie paused, a look of confusion settling on her face. “How do you have two babies at a time? How does it happen?”

“I think it’s just random,” Mark said. “It just happens sometimes.”

“Unless there’s someone in your family who has a twin- you know, two babies at once - or had twins. Then, it might be more likely.”

Suzie pondered this and then gave a defeated shrug. 

“Yeah, I don’t think that Mommy has any twins in her family,” she said in thoughtful (if a little put out) tone. “ _ Momma _ might have twins in her family, but Momma doesn’t know anything about her family. That’s why Mommy had the baby and she didn’t.”

“I see,” Elizabeth said, nodding. “Do you think your mums are going to have another baby?”

Suzie’s eyes widened and she shook her head vigorously. 

“Nope. Just Charlie,” she stated, before quickly adding, “And me.”

Elizabeth nodded as Mark made to resume his rummaging through the toy box. Suzie seemed to be still thinking hard. 

“It’s kind of weird though,” she thought out loud.

“What is, dear?” Elizabeth asked, the curls in her ponytail bouncing as she tilted her head in question.

“That Charlie isn’t Momma’s baby- like Momma didn’t  _ have _ Charlie - but Charlie has the same hip thing that Momma has.”

Elizabeth, who had not been informed of this unusual coincidence (out of respect for Kerry’s privacy, presumably), looked at Mark. But Mark just shrugged. 

“I guess it’s kind of like twins. It’s just a thing that happens sometimes.”

“That’s what Mommy said,” Suzie said, nodding again, though she was picking at the freshly-vacuumed carpet. “Momma never had to wear the hip thingy like Charlie does because her mommy and daddy didn’t know about her hop until she was too big. The thingy is only for little little babies.”

Suzie frowned, her little brow furrowing in concern.

“They said that if the hip thingy doesn’t work, that Charlie might have to get surgery,” she said in a slightly quiet voice Her eyes flicked up towards the bassinet again and then to Elizabeth. “Do you do surgery on babies?”

Elizabeth shook her head. 

“Nope. I do it on kids sometimes, but not on babies.”

“Is it harder to do it on babies ‘cause they’re so little?” Suzie wondered aloud. 

“Yes,” Elizabeth affirmed. “But also because babies are very different than kids or grownups. Well, actually kids are so different than grownups that there aren’t special surgeons, but special doctors that see just kids.

“Like Uncle Doug. He works with your mums and your Uncle Mark in the ER, but his specialty is in taking care of kids.”

“Yeah. Like last year when I fell into the coffee table and I cut my chin. Mommy took me to the ER, but she had Uncle Doug be my doctor instead of her or Momma.” Suzie leaned forward and dropped her voice to just a whisper. “Momma was not very happy about that.” 

Elizabeth chuckled and nodded in acknowledgement. 

“I would understand why. But, if she still let him treat you, because she knows that that’s what he’s really good at,” she stated. “Just like how if Charlie  _ does _ end up needing surgery, your mums wouldn’t want me to do it. They’d want a surgeon who does surgery on babies to do it.”

Suzie nodded. The continued conversation about the possibility of Charlie needing surgery seemed to be weighing on her, so Elizabeth took her hand and rubbed it comfortingly. 

“But I don’t think Charlie’s going to end up needing surgery. So, I don’t think you need to worry about it.”

Suzie nodded again, a little bit stronger this time. Elizabeth smiled at her before they both glanced towards Mark, who had been drawn back to the toy box.

“Charlie might not,” Mark said, “but this baby might.”

He pulled out a baby doll that looked like she’d gone through the ringer (and that was not even considering the numerous Band-Aids and pieces of gauze wrapped around its extremities).

“Suzie, what happened to your babydoll?” Elizabeth asked as Mark showed it to her.

“Oh,” Suzie said in a very serious tone. “She had an accident.”

“What…  _ kind _ of accident?”

“A car accident,” Suzie stated simply. “She was driving and then another car came out of nowhere and it hit her and pushed her car into a tree.”

Mark and Elizabeth exchanged glances. 

“And, let me guess,” Mark said slowly. “She had to come to the ER, right?”

Suzie nodded seriously. Then, she leaned forward to whisper again. She covered the doll’s ears with her hands.

“She didn’t make it. But she doesn’t know that yet.”

Mark nodded, chuckling. Elizabeth looked at him out of the corner of her eye and then back to Suzie, her eyes narrowing. 

“Suzie, how often do your mums talk about work at home?”

“Not very often,” Suzie said with a shrug. “They used to, but then I drew a picture of someone getting stabbed and made up a story to go with it, and they got really scared because they didn’t know why I knew about stabbings. They stopped talking about work after that.

“But they still do  _ sometimes _ . Like at night when they’re in their room and they think I’m asleep, but I’m not, so I can hear them.”

Elizabeth nodded slowly. She glanced at Mark again and then let out a sigh. 

“Well, I think this baby might not have made it in the  _ ER _ , but I think if she came up to the  _ OR _ -” Elizabeth made pointed eye contact with Mark. “- Then, maybe she might still make it.”

“Like if she had surgery?” Suzie asked excitedly.

Elizabeth nodded. Despite how concerned Suzie had grown over conversation of it happening to her sister, the prospect of it happening to her  _ babydoll _ was not  _ nearly _ the same cause for concern.

“Do you know if your mums have a sewing kit anywhere?” 

“I think there’s one under the couch.”

“Can you grab it for me?” 

Suzie jumped to her feet and ran around to the other side of the couch to look for the kit. Mark took the opportunity of her absence to look at Elizabeth. 

“Are you gonna get in trouble for this?”

“I’ll lay out the ground rules,” Elizabeth replied quietly, with a small shrug. 

Suzie returned with the kit, which she eagerly handed to Elizabeth. 

“Now,” Elizabeth said, putting her hands down on the kit and looking Suzie straight in the eye. “Suzie, if I’m going to show you this, you  _ must  _ promise me that you will only do this to the babydoll and only when a grown-up is with you.”

Suzie nodded with the same eagerness.

“You  _ absolutely _ promise?” Elizabeth asked, looking at Suzie closely. “Because if you can’t, I won’t show you.”

“I  _ promise _ .”

Though both Susan and Kerry had thanked them both several times when they’d returned home around lunchtime on Sunday, it wasn’t until Mark returned to work on Monday, that he truly felt the positive effect the weekend had had. 

Everyone seemed to be moving faster, there was less standing around in the Admit area, and a certain Chief of Emergency Services could be heard shouting orders from the trauma room l in a way she hadn’t been heard for a week.

But it was a bit later, about halfway through the morning, when he received a phone call from Susan regarding the  _ other _ effect.

“Tell Elizabeth she’s fired.”

“Fired for what?”

“For teaching my daughter how to give surgical sutures.”

“Oh no.” Mark’s eyes widened. “Did Suzie… She promised she was only going to do it to the babydoll. When one of you guys was around-”

“Oh, she did it to the babydoll after asking me to watch her,” Susan reassured him. “But I’m more concerned with the fact that we were  _ trying not to do this. _ Mark, there’s a reason we stopped talking about work at home.”

“I know, I know. Suzie  _ may  _ have mentioned it…”

Mark imagined he could hear Susan rolling her eyes from the other end of the phone line.

“Well, in case we weren’t clear in the house rules, no medicine is allowed to be discussed or practiced in our house. Not to even to babydolls.”

“Duly noted,” he said with a chuckle.

“Now, for the more pressing problem,” Susan began. “Why the hell is my four-year-old better at this than half of the interns?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, everyone! Hope this Saturday night is treating you well.
> 
> This chapter was suggested as a prompt by everybodyknows-everybodydies. If anyone else has a family prompt they'd like to see, you can leave it in a comment here or message me on [tumblr](https://bwayfan25.tumblr.com/) and I'll see what I can do. Mouse, I hope you enjoyed it! (And I hope all the rest of you did too.)
> 
> Fun fact: Suzie scaring her parents about a story about stabbing is directly inspired by one of my real-life events! When I was about 3 or 4, I dictated my first (recorded) story to my mom. It was about a mean fork who shot people. My mom asked why I knew about things like shooting people, and I apparently replied, "You know that show where they prosecute (pronounced pah-sa-coot] offenders? You know... 'And this is the story.' Bum, bum." 
> 
> The next time she took me and my sister to my grandparents house so they could babysit, she told my grandpa, "You are not allowed to watch _Law and Order_ in front of Beth anymore." He waved her away, saying that I was too young and I wasn't listening, but she was like, "No, she is _definitely_ listening. I've got proof. You can't do it anymore." So, he just watched _M*A*S*H_ in front of me instead from then on.
> 
> Anyways, have a good rest of your weekend! Until next time.


	8. Hail to the Chief

Chen glanced towards the monitor and then looked back at Carter. 

“John, we need to page her.”

“No, no. It’s fine,” Carter said, raising his hands defensively. “Just… just give me a second.”

Chen rolled her eyes. 

The young man that had been brought in what they thought was a heart attack lay on the trauma table. He wasn’t moving anymore, which would explain the monitor’s screech.

She and Carter had been the ones to set to work on the patient, with Malucci joining them a few minutes later. As it appeared he was in the throes of a heart attack, she was ready to inject him with a drug to reverse it, but Carter had stopped her before she could. 

He’d happened to notice how tall the man was and this, compounded with his brother telling them that he had loose joints and their observation of how far apart his eyes were, had led to the determination that the young man had Marfan’s syndrome. The connective tissue disorder meant that the drug meant to reverse the attack would do more harm than good. But, even so, they’d exhausted every alternative treatment without any luck.

“John, please.”

“No, I’ve got it,” Carter snapped. “Let’s… Let’s just…”

Carter ran his hands through his hair, but the action did nothing to spur any additional thoughts. Chen just shook her head, rolling her eyes again as she turned to Malucci.

“Dave, page Dr. Weaver.”

Malucci nodded and did as instructed, ignoring Carter’s huff. He had no sooner turned back when Kerry appeared in the doorway, eyebrows raised expectantly. 

“That was fast,” Malucci said, jolting in surprise.

Kerry frowned. 

“I was in the room next door.”

Malucci considered this for a minute and then gave a shrug of acknowledgement.

“What have we got?” Kerry asked, stepping forward to pick up the chart from the counter.

“Marfan patient with a heart attack,” Chen explained. She stepped behind Kerry to read the chart over her shoulder. “We did everything we could think of that wouldn’t cause further damage, but nothing’s worked.”

Kerry nodded as she flipped through the chart. 

“How long has that been happening?” she asked, nodding towards the monitor without looking up.

Chen glanced up at the clock. 

“Twenty-four minutes.”

“Carter thinks there’s something else we can do-” Malucci began before he was cut off.

“And there is,” Carter hissed. “Just let me think.”

Kerry glanced up at him before glancing sideways at Chen out of the corner of her eye. She gave a small shake of her head. 

Chen and Malucci both nodded solemnly. Kerry handed Chen the chart before stepping around the trauma table to silence the monitor. 

At the disappearance of the shrill screech, Carter cast Kerry a look of such anger that just about anyone else would have recoiled in fear. But she just raised her eyebrows at him in a look that was both taken aback and that also may include a threat of grounding. But when she spoke, her voice did not convey the same threat.

“John,” she said in a soft voice. “Call it.”

For a moment, it appeared like Carter was going to say no. He didn’t though, and instead just sighed and looked up at the clock.

“Time of death… 2:14.”

Kerry and the others nodded before starting towards the door. Malucci made it out first, but Chen hung back. Kerry slowed to a halt as well.

“Dr. Weaver,” she said, dropping her voice.

“Yes?”

“Would it…” Chen sighed. “Would it have made a difference if we’d paged you sooner?”

“I don’t think so,” Kerry replied, shaking her head. “It looks like you did everything right. Well done.”

Chen gave a small smile that looked more like a grimace before following Malucci out. Kerry made to follow as well, but then paused.

She turned back to look at Carter just in time to see him angrily push over a tray of supplies.

“ _ HEY! _ ” she roared. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Carter turned back to her, hands raised defensively though he didn’t seem all that remorseful.

“They didn’t need to page you,” he said curtly. “I didn’t need you.”

“And you didn’t  _ use _ me,” Kerry replied with a small shrug. “Which is fine. I’d much rather be paged and not used than the other way around.”

“Well, I still didn’t need you.”

Though the response was still curt, the tone behind it the second time was far less so. 

Kerry observed him curiously for a moment before she stepped towards the counter and nudged a stool over to where she’d been standing with her foot. She sat down, shaking her arm out of the cuff of her crutch before setting it in front of her and folding her arms on top of it.

When she looked up at Carter, she found him turned away from her. Only a sliver of his face could be seen from her vantage point and, from what she could see of his expression, he appeared to be deep in thought.

“What’s wrong, Carter?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Clearly,  _ something’s _ wrong,” she said, motioning to the scattered supplies (that were, thankfully, individually wrapped). “What’s this about, hmm? You don’t do this. What’s wrong?”

Carter inhaled deeply and closed his eyes. He paused for a moment, before exhaling. 

“I wanted to prove to you that I could run a trauma on my own without needing to page an Attending.”

Kerry’s brow furrowed. 

“I know that.”

“I mean a  _ complex _ one,” Carter added. “Not an… Not an easy one.”

“Carter, I  _ know  _ that,” Kerry repeated firmly. “I’ve watched you work for  _ years _ .” 

“Yeah, but… But I know that there was competition for this position. I mean, the competition was just in here with me and-”

“Carter, I didn’t hire you blind,” Kerry said sincerely. “I knew what you were capable of when I offered you the job.”

Carter nodded slightly, but he still didn’t seem convinced. 

“I just…” He sighed again. “I just want to prove to you that you hired the right person.”

Kerry opened her mouth to reply, but then closed it and looked at him again. She considered him closely for a moment before a smile started to tug at her lips.

“Oh, I see,” she said with a chuckle. “You want me to be proud of you.”

“What? No,” Carter said quickly, shaking his head.

This only made Kerry’s smile grow.

“That’s very sweet, John,” she said, shaking her head a bit herself. “But you don’t have to prove to me that I hired the right person. If we didn’t think it was the right choice, we wouldn’t have made it. And I say ‘we’ because it was a group decision.”

Carter let out another sigh.

“Besides, we work on a team for a reason,” Kerry continued. “This isn’t Family Medicine. You don’t sit in your own exam room seeing patients all alone for eight hours. We all page each other. Attendings included. 

“You prove more by asking for help if you’re not sure you’re going to need it than by barely accomplishing it on your own. Sure, it may be frustrating sometimes to get paged for what feels like no reason, but we all know that things can south at any second. It’s better to be there mad because you’re just watching than for it all to go wrong because there wasn’t an extra set of hands around to help. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah.” 

“And as far as your performance goes...John, you’re doing fine.” Kerry smile turned into a smirk. “And to be honest, do you really think that if you  _ weren’t _ that I wouldn’t tell you?”

This comment and the honesty behind it elicited a chuckle from Carter. Kerry joined him, which relaxed him significantly. 

When their chuckling subsided, Kerry sighed and rose from her stool.

“Now. If you really want to do something that proves you were the right choice  _ or _ to make me proud, whatever way you define it for yourself, I’ve got two tasks for you.”

“Alright. What are they?”

“Number one, clean this mess up. And Carter, if I  _ ever _ catch you doing that again, you don’t need to worry about being Chief Resident because you won’t be any kind of resident. You understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Carter replied nodding. 

“Good. Now, for number two...” Kerry relaxed slightly from the stiff posture she’d assumed to tell him off. She let out a deep breath and looked at Carter. “Your Chief Resident year is practice to be an Attending. You’re not an Attending yet, but you’re meant to use the time as Chief Resident to practice the skills that will help you be an Attending. Not clinical skills, but rather leadership skills.”

She motioned to the lifeless body of the young man on the table.

“You’ve already attended to your patient. Next step will be to attend to his family. But after that...” 

Kerry turned and pointed out of the window of the trauma room. Carter followed her line of sight to find Malucci and Chen talking a little ways down the hallways. 

“Attend to your physicians,” Kerry finished. She heaved a sigh. “I was never very good at that as Chief Resident. And I’m probably  _ still  _ not very good at it, but I, uh… I try a little harder.”

Kerry crossed around the table to clap Carter on the arm once and give him one last smile. And as she made to leave the trauma room and return to what inevitably was going to be the  _ same _ conversation with a patient’s daughter that she had been paged out of, she paused and turned back. 

Carter looked at her, his brow furrowing at the thoughtful look on her face.

“There you go, Carter,” she said with a thoughtful chuckle. “If you  _ really _ wanted to make me proud, be better than I was.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Carter-wantin-to-prove-himself combined with some Kerry Weaver self-awareness, anyone?
> 
> Though I would expect most of you read the AU (or have read it since I started publishing these for context), for anyone who _hasn't_ , let me explain this a little. Obviously, this is the scene from "The Longer You Stay" at the beginning of Season 8 where Kerry is AWOL while Chen, Malucci, and Carter are panicking in the trauma room. Kerry is across the street meeting with someone about finding her birth mother, which is why she missed the numerous pages.
> 
> However, in this AU, Kerry has already found a family of her own and is not as eager (or, imo, desperate) to find her birth family so that she can have a family again. So, in this scene, she's close by to intervene (or not) because she's not having that meeting. And, if you are interested in something from this AU of Kerry meeting part of her birth family, you should read my long one-shot [Seeing Double](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21497437). It's kind of out there and not one of my usual types of prompt but it came to me in a dream and is a very interesting concept in my opinion.
> 
> I _may_ be able to churn another one of these out at some point tomorrow since I'm taking a day off of work, but we'll see. Regardless of whether I get it out tomorrow or sometime this weekend, I'm very excited about the next one. It's going to be very fluffy and, honestly, that's a good deal of why I'm writing this. I take any excuse to write fluffiness... and also gut wrenching pain.
> 
> Anyways, I've blabbered too much. I hope you're well. Have a good rest of your day!
> 
> Until next time.


	9. Everybody Loves Lucy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Side note: This is _not_ the chapter I promised at the end of the previous chapter, but it's still fun.

It wasn’t necessarily  _ unusual _ to hear shouting emanating from chairs on a day-to-day basis, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was acceptable. And it was far less acceptable to be coming not from a pair of patients but a pair of physicians.

But that’s exactly what Kerry found upon rounding the corner of the Admit Desk. Instead of a couple of irate bar-goers or football rivals trying to duke it out until they got seen, she found Doctors Lewis and Carter in the heat of a full-on argument right in the middle of the ER.

“What’s the matter with you two?” she asked upon drawing even with the arguing pair. “You two have been at each other’s throats all day. What’s wrong?”

“Ask Dr. Lewis,” Carter said, raising his eyebrows at Kerry before shooting Susan a dirty look.

“I asked the both of you,” Kerry stated firmly. “Though, if this is about you drinking milk directly from the carton, I’m on her side, John. It’s gross and you shouldn’t do it-”

“It’s not about that. I haven’t done that again,” Carter reassured her. “It’s about the fact that Dr. Lewis keeps commandeering my med student.”

“And I was just trying to explain to Dr. Carter,” Susan cut in, “that I am his  _ Attending _ and if I require help from his med student, then I’m going to commandeer to my heart’s content.”

“What do you even need her for?” Carter scoffed, throwing his hands up in disbelief. “Susan, you could commandeer any of the residents to help you, but you always pick her and it’s  _ only _ because you like her!”

“ _ Of course it is!  _ I never denied that.” 

Kerry was rolling her eyes and muttering under her breath when she heard a small,“Um, Dr. Weaver?”

She turned to spot Lucy Knight standing nearby, watching the argument with a deeply concerned look on her face. 

“Um, Dr. Weaver, is it possible for a medical student to  _ choose  _ which doctor they spend the day with?”

Kerry didn’t even have the chance to open her mouth to reply when both Susan and Carter immediately stopped arguing to turn to Lucy and shout, “ _ NO”  _ in perfect unison before turning right back on each other.

“Susan, it doesn’t even make any sense. She doesn’t even know how to do anything.” Carter looked at Lucy and raised a defensive hand. “No offense, but you don’t.”

“I’m going to  _ teach _ her. Because this is a  _ teaching hospital _ , Carter-”

“But it’s my  _ job  _ to teach her!”

Kerry and Lucy watched the bickering for a few more moments. Lucy’s concern deepened with every passing second, but Kerry just shook her head and glanced at the med student that was the source of all the commotion.

“Ms. Knight, have you lanced a boil yet?”

“Uh, no?”

“Would you like to?” 

“Sure.”

“Wonderful. Follow me.”

Kerry nodded Lucy to follow her down the hallway. Lucy began to do so, but slowed as she watched the continued argument.

“What’s the matter, Ms. Knight?”

“Shouldn’t you- Don’t you need to stop them?”

Kerry shook her head and waved her away as she continued down the hallway. 

“I’ll sort them out when I get home.”

Lucy nodded and made to continue on as well. But instead of following a step behind, she fell into step with Kerry. 

“ _ Both _ of them?” she asked, dropping her voice. 

“It’s a long story.”

They had long since walked away when Susan and Carter finally paused their bickering long enough to breathe. Susan was the first to look around.

“Wait. Where’d she go?”

“Oh, great,” Carter said, rolling his eyes dramatically. “Now, you’ve lost her.”

“ _ I _ lost her?” Susan asked incredulously. “ _ You’re _ the one who lost her. Because you don’t cherish her enough.”

“I’m her resident. I’m not  _ supposed  _ to cherish her.”

“And that’s why she prefers me,” Susan said with a haughty toss of her hair. 

Before Carter could retort, Mark popped his head out of the exam room next door. 

“Hey, will you two keep the custody battle down? Some of us are trying to practice medicine here.”

Susan and Carter both shot him looks, but they just bounced off as he shrugged and retreated into the exam room. They were about to start afresh when they looked across the Admit Desk and saw Kerry returning to it with Lucy in tow. 

Kerry had disappeared by the time Susan and Carter made their way over, but that didn’t matter to them.

“Lucy, you got some ‘splainin to do,” Susan said, crossing her arms.

“Where’d you go?” 

“Well, um, since you guys couldn’t figure out who I should work with today, Dr. Weaver said I could shadow her until you figured it out,” Lucy said with a shrug. “So, I guess if you’ve got a problem with it, you should take it up with her?”

Susan and Carter looked at Lucy and then exchanged glances. 

Susan sighed. 

“We probably won’t be able to convince her on our own, so we should do it together,” Susan said, turning to Carter and offering him a hand. “Truce?”

Carter inhaled deeply and nodded. 

“Truce.”

But as Carter went to shake her hand, Susan smacked it in a high-five so hard he recoiled in pain. 

“Sucker,” she hissed joyfully. “I’m her  _ wife _ .  _ Of course _ I can convince her on my own.  _ You  _ on the other hand…”

Susan didn’t finish the sentence before she let out a laugh almost like a cackle before she sped off in search of Kerry. Carter, still wincing from the high-five, took off after her.

Lucy watched them go, her look of deep concern returning as she wondered what she did to get this popular.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise I am still working on the chapter I promised in the notes of the previous, but I got the inspiration for this little one-shot and I wanted to get it out of my system first. I had listed Lucy in the tags but hadn't gotten to one with her yet, so this felt right. The next one is very fluffy but on the longer side, so I hope this tides ya over. 
> 
> Not much else to say. Hope your weekend was good! 
> 
> Until next time. 


	10. An Unexpected Event

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is 100% fluff and I will not apologize for it. Also, this chapter is informed somewhat by my pre-quel-ish fic [The Summer of '77](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20554961). It feels weirdly vain and self-serving to keep linking you to other fics I've written, but hey, I take continuity very seriously. 

Jeanie shifted the car into park in the spot in front of Kerry’s new house in Oak Park. 

“This is it, right?” she asked, leaning sideways slightly to glance up at the house.

“Yes, it is,” Kerry confirmed with a smile. “Thank you so much again for inviting us over. We had a lot of fun. Right, Charlie?”

Kerry and Jeanie both looked in the back seat of the car where Charlie and Carlos both sat in their car seats. At her mother’s question, Charlie babbled something, which in turn led Carlos to babble something as well. 

Both women chuckled, first at the toddlers and then at Jeanie’s poor husband Reggie who squished up against the window. 

“It was fun. It’s been awhile since we got a chance to catch up,” Jeanie replied. “I miss all of you guys at County.”

“Well, you know, once he’s old enough to go to school, you’ve got a job if you want it.”

Kerry raised her eyebrows as if to sell the offer more, but Jeanie just chuckled. 

“I appreciate it, but I’ve got some ideas as to what’ll happen then.”

“I just wanted to offer,” Kerry said, raising her hands defensively.

Jeanie chuckled again before Kerry began to get out of the car. She and Reggie both followed suit, her to give Kerry a hug and him to help get the car seat out. 

As Kerry unbuckled Charlie from the seat and picked her up, Jeanie took a moment to look at the house. 

“You know, Kerry, I don’t think I’ve been to your new house yet.”

Kerry put Charlie down (careful to grab her hand before she could run off) and looked up at Jeanie, frowning. She looked from her to the house and then back, her frown deepening in agreement with Jeanie’s statement.

“Well, we can rectify that right now, can’t we?” Kerry looked from Jeanie to Reggie. “Do you have a couple minutes? It shouldn’t take long.” 

Jeanie and Reggie exchanged glances and then shrugged. Reggie, arms full of Charlie’s car seat, stepped aside to let Jeanie extract Carlos from  _ his _ car seat. 

The group then made their way up the small concrete path from the sidewalk to the front stairs. 

Kerry released Charlie’s hand so that the toddler could climb the stairs on her own. Or at least, that was her intention. The fourteen-month-old had other ideas.

“You can do it, honey,” Kerry encouraged as Charlie babbled frustrated nonsense. 

Charlie did it again, looking up at Kerry and then pointing to the stairs before babbling again. 

“I know, honey, but we have to go inside,” Kerry said with a shrug. 

“Uh, is the baby actually saying something, or is it just me?” Reggie asked as he drew even with the others. 

Kerry, who had taken Charlie’s hand in an effort to spur the young girl onwards, just chuckled and shook her head. 

“No, she’s not. We just have this conversation everyday,” Kerry explained. She looked up at Reggie. “I think the stairs are scary when they’re almost as big as you.”

Jeanie and Reggie both chuckled as they followed Kerry and Charlie up the stairs. 

Kerry pulled out her keys and unlocked the door. She pushed it open and had managed to get out the first few words asking the couple if they’d like to stay for dinner when she was interrupted.

_ “SURPRISE!” _

Kerry froze, blinking in surprise at the not just Susan and Suzie in the living room, but at least half the staff of the ER. She looked back to Jeanie as if trying to figure out if she was seeing the same thing and found Jeanie grinning at her. 

Susan, who was standing at the front of the gathered group, stepped forward. She was also grinning broadly, though her smile conveyed not just her happiness but also how pretty damn proud of herself she was. 

“Is this for-” Kerry looked around at the group. “Is this for  _ me? _ ”

“ _ ‘Is it for you?’ _ ” Susan rolled her eyes. “Is it or is it not your fortieth birthday tomorrow?”

“Well, yes,” Kerry replied with a shrug. “But I figured that with the wedding next week that-”

“Don’t worry about that,” Susan said, shaking her head. “I got express permission from the bride herself.”

The bride in question appeared at Susan’s elbow, shaking her head and wagging a finger at Susan. 

“That is a lie! That is a  _ lie _ ,” Elizabeth said, her curls bouncing as she shook her head and then looked at Kerry. “She asked the bride if she could plan something, but then would not tell the bride what that thing  _ was _ . Because she didn’t trust the bride could keep it a secret.”

“Elizabeth, honey, I  _ told _ you,” Susan said, draping an arm around Elizabeth’s shoulders. “I only kept it from you because of pregnancy brain.”

“And I told you I don’t  _ have _ pregnancy brain,” Elizabeth said firmly. She looked at Mark, who stood a few feet away. “Mark, do I have pregnancy brain?”

Mark smiled and gave a sheepish shrug.

“I plead the Fifth?”

“Good call, man,” Doug added, clapping Mark on the shoulder as he overheard the conversation. 

Kerry, Susan, and the others around chuckled as Elizabeth rolled her eyes and made for Mark to figure out what ‘pleading the Fifth’ meant. Susan then turned back to Kerry.

“So, you’re surprised?” she asked excitedly. 

“Do I not look surprised?” Kerry asked rhetorically, which made Susan’s grin broaden even more.

“I am so relieved,” Susan said, sighing as she wrapped an arm around Kerry’s waist and pulled her closer to kiss her on the cheek. “Because I cannot begin to tell you how hard it is to plan a surprise for you. Between you knowing everything that goes on in the ER and none of them being able to keep their mouths shut about anything, it’s been terrible.”

Suzie took this opportunity to pop out from where she had been hiding behind Susan’s leg. 

“And I didn’t tell the secret!” she said happily. “I really wanted to but I  _ didn’t _ .”

“You didn’t. And I’m very proud of you,” Susan confirmed. 

She stepped forward to take Charlie from Kerry so that the latter could scoop Suzie up into a hug. When she was close enough, she dropped her voice and whispered, “I  _ may  _ have promised her the second piece of cake. It’s a give and take.”

Kerry chuckled and squeezed Suzie tight before setting her back down. Then, remembering those who had followed in the door behind her, she turned to Jeanie. 

“And you were in on this too?”

“Yep,” Jeanie replied with a smile nearly as big as Susan’s. “After we scheduled the playdate, Susan called me and filled me in on her plans. She said that if we had the playdate at  _ our _ house, I could bring up the fact that I hadn’t visited here yet as an excuse to come in.”

“I figured your manners would take over,” Susan added with a shrug. “You’re predictable.”

This led to another chuckle and then to Kerry hugging Jeanie in gratitude. The other guests then followed suit, taking turns to greet Kerry and wish her happy birthday. 

Susan hung back to wait her turn. When it was finally time, she resumed her excited-but-still-pretty-damn-proud-of-herself grin. 

“There’s one more surprise for you,” she said after giving Kerry a long kiss on the lips. “I went out on a limb a little bit, but I think you’ll enjoy it.”

Kerry’s smile faltered just a bit, but she then immediately raised her brow curiously (and also a bit concernedly).

“When I was trying to figure out who all to invite, I thought about your friends- who you talk to the most, who you talk  _ about  _ the most- and I realized that outside of the people from work, there’s really only one person you ever call,” Susan explained. “And since you talk to him about once every three months and you seem to get along pretty well, I figured it was safe.”

Kerry frowned, not following her.

“Who are you talking about?”

“Your ex-husband.”

Kerry was about to open her mouth to respond when Susan pointed off to a tall olive-skinned man in the crowd. And, sure enough, there he was. 

Of course, he was  _ also  _ forty years old now and therefore not the gangly teenager that had been her best friend growing up (nor the gangly young adult she married). But when he smiled and waved happily at her, she felt the same rush of relief and safety she always felt when she was around him. 

“Michael?” she asked in disbelief, before turning to look at Susan. “But how did you-?”

“He’s on your speed dial.”

At this, Michael lit up even more and immediately stepped forward, his arms open for a hug. 

“When Susan called me, she called from the house phone, so I thought it was you,” Michael explained as he wrapped Kerry in a bear hug. “She was a little worried it would be weird to invite me, but she said that she figured I was the closest thing to Minnesota family she could invite.”

Kerry felt herself tear up as she nodded into his shoulder. When she pulled away, she observed him at arm’s length, shaking her head in disbelief. 

“I invited my parents, but my dad’s been sick and it’s a bit too long of a trip,” Michael continued. “But they wanted me to tell you happy birthday and that they’re thinking about you. And also that they hope the party is better than the one on your eighteenth birthday.”

Kerry frowned for a moment, trying to figure out what he meant, before her eyes grew wide. 

“Tax day.”

“What do you mean ‘tax day’?” Susan asked curiously. 

“So, when Kerry turned eighteen, our families got together for dinner, like we always did. And after cake and gifts and everything, Kerry’s dad left the room and came back with this thick manila envelope. And inside was a blank Income Tax form,” Michael said, his chuckling growing at the memory. “And he said, ‘Okay, now that you’re an adult, you have to start filing taxes. But you better be quick, because you’ve only got about four hours before they’re due.’”

Michael paused for breath as his laughing was now making the story hard to tell. Kerry rolled her eyes and continued for him.

“And I was panicking because I had no clue how to do taxes and my dad sounded so serious about it.” Kerry rolled her eyes again, though she was smiling. “And it went on for about, oh, I don’t know, ten minutes? Until my mom finally reminded me I’d never worked a job and therefore had no need to pay taxes.”

“Your dad felt so bad about that,” Michael said in between chuckles. “He didn’t think you’d take him seriously.”

“And I shouldn’t have,” Kerry remarked before looking back to Susan and shaking her head.”My dad was rarely serious about anything.”

“Her  _ mom,  _ on the other hand, was serious about  _ everything _ .” Michael took a deep breath to stifle his laughter. “And don’t get me wrong, Mrs. Weaver was  _ really  _ nice, but she was also kind of scary. Mostly because she could just look at you a certain way and you were certain that you were grounded. Even if she wasn’t your mom.”

“Hmmm....” Susan tapped her chin, her eyes narrowed as if deep in thought. “I wonder who that sounds like.”

Unless Susan was mistaken, a little bit of color rose in Kerry’s cheeks. But given the smile on her face, she didn’t seem to be embarrassed about the comparison, but rather proud of it.

After the surprises had been revealed, Kerry was pulled further into the party to greet her guests and thank them for coming. 

Soon, Mark and Carter started serving dinner to the gathered guests, some of whom made their appearances before they had to leave for their shifts at County just as others arrived from theirs. After a round of “Happy Birthday” that made Kerry flush as red as her hair, Suzie helped Susan serve the cake to the guests. (Making sure to set her special second piece of cake aside before handing out the others.)

Susan had been adamant about no presents, but a few brought cards or letters. Carter refused to put his in the basket on the table to be read later and instead delivered it directly to Kerry, who opened it immediately and then had to fight back tears as she read his heartfelt words.

But of all the guests and camaraderie, Michael proved to be the most interesting thing about the party. He was friendly and outgoing, which helped as he introduced himself to the numerous ER staff that passed through the party, but most were interested in him because he had stories about the ER Chief long before she ever had that title. 

_ “Arrested?” _ Susan asked in disbelief. “Like handcuffs, cop car, the whole shebang?”

Michael and Kerry both nodded as the rest of the group looked on in surprise.

The party had dwindled to a smaller group of past and present ER staff, who had settled in the living room so that Michael could entertain them with stories of Kerry as a teenager (and Kerry could flush in embarrassment at said stories).

“We were arrested, but not charged with anything. And we shouldn’t have even been arrested in the first place,” Kerry explained to the group. “We didn’t want to recount it all again since we already talked to the paramedics. And when trying to be really nice didn’t work, he tried to scare us.”

“And I don’t think it scared us, but it scared our parents. When they got the call that we were at the police station, they were  _ pissed _ ,” Michael added. “That was the night I learned Kerry’s middle name because when our parents got there, her mom was so mad she used her full name. And her dad’s too, now that I think about it.”

“She did?” At Michael’s nod, Kerry’s mouth curled into an ‘o’ as she remembered. “Oh right. Because he made a joke and my mother was having none of it.”

Some of those in the group chuckled while others rolled their eyes at the seeming similarity to some of their own experiences.

“Okay. One last question before we wrap things up because I’m sure that Suzie is still awake and is going to be furious that the party went on so long after she had to go to bed…” Susan inhaled deeply before looking directly at Michael. “I’ve been waiting to ask you this all night: Has Kerry Weaver ever smoked weed?”

Everyone (Kerry included, though she knew the answer) waited with bated breath for Michael to answer.

“Oh,  _ yeah _ ,” he replied as if it wasn’t even a question. 

“I  _ knew _ you were lying to me,” Susan said we she leaned forward to poke Kerry hard in the leg. “You said you’d never bought drugs before.”

“And I never did!” Kerry replied defensively. 

“Oh, no. She never did,” Michael confirmed. “She let  _ me _ buy it and then came over to my house to smoke it.”

“Oooh, you were one of  _ those _ people?” Mark commented, earning him a few chuckles from the group.

“I only did that, what, twice?” Kerry asked, narrowing her eyes at Michael.

“In high school. You did it all the time in college.”

“We didn’t even go to the same college. How could I have done it all the time?”

“You did it every break,” Michael said with a shrug. “First thing you did after saying hi to your parents.”

He looked at the rest of the group and raised his eyebrows, before adding as an aside, “Most winter breaks, it wasn’t just the Weavers’ Christmas tree and our menorah that was lit up.”

Kerry’s face burned it’s deepest red yet, which was hidden as she buried her face in her hands. But it didn’t take long for her too to start laughing along with the rest.

When the laughter began to die down, the group started to gather their things up and get ready to leave. 

Kerry made plans to have breakfast with Michael before his flight the next day, and then he too left. Mark and Elizabeth pulled up the rear, as Mark had had to wake his pregnant fiancée up in order for them to leave.

Susan and Kerry waved their guests off from the open doorway before they closed it and Susan slipped an arm around Kerry’s waist.

“Did you have fun?” she asked as she pulled Kerry tighter to her. When Kerry nodded, she continued with, “Surprised?”

“Very.”

Susan smiled and kissed Kerry on the cheek.

“Good.”

“You’re too good to me.”

“Yeah?” When Kerry nodded, Susan squeezed her tight. “Well, only because you were good to me first.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I had a lot of fun with this because it's just fun. And, as though familial bonds and care come out a lot under times of duress, they are just as present in times of celebration. 
> 
> It's kind of funny to me that I enjoy writing late Season 7 so much in this AU because late Season 7 is probably one of my least favorite parts of _ER_. This is entirely because my favorite character (that is actually present in Season 7) is having a really fucking terrible time and has no support to deal with her shit. And also, Elizabeth got uncharacteristically mean in Season 7 (imo), which hurts because I love Lizzie and it didn't really feel right to me. 
> 
> Of course, this all just supports my theory that County General is actually The Bad Place and that they figure that out at the end of each season, so each new season is just the characters getting rebooted and having to deal with new terrible things. I would explain further except that if I linger on the subject for too long, I will inevitably think of _The Good Place_ series finale and start bawling in my office.
> 
> Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this. I've got a light-hearted one coming up next before another heavier one. 
> 
> Until next time.


	11. 2.0

Mark would have assumed that Susan was simply leaning against the wall near the Admit Desk, thinking/zoning out as she charted, had she not occasionally glanced up over the chart towards two figures chatting near a patient’s bed across the way. 

Quietly, he sidled up behind her and poked his head out from around the wall at the same time she glanced up again. 

“Whatcha looking at?”

Susan jumped in surprise and spun around. Immediately, she pushed Mark back around the corner. 

“Shhhhh! You and your big bald head are going to get me in trouble.”

Unconsciously, Mark ran a hand over his big bald head and frowned.

“Who were you looking at?”

“I am trying to figure out who Kerry is talking to,” Susan whispered. “She’s been following her around for an hour and I’m pretty sure she’s flirting with her.”

“How do you know she’s flirting?” 

“She has laughed at every single one of the woman’s jokes. And I heard one of them. They were not funny,” Susan said sincerely. “Some of them I don’t even think were jokes.”

Mark smiled slightly. 

“Are you jealous, Susan?”

“I’m not jealous. I’m  _ insulted _ .” Susan crossed her arms. “If she’s going to flirt with another woman, the least she could do is not do it in front of me. I mean, I don’t flirt with Elizabeth in front of you.”

Mark, who had tried to peek around the corner, did a double take. His smile faltered and was replaced with a concerned frown.

“You flirt with Elizabeth behind my back?”

Susan rolled her eyes. 

“No, Mark. I’m  _ kidding.” _

“Oh. Okay,” he said in a relieved tone. Then, he paused. “Have you  _ wanted  _ to flirt with Elizabeth behind my back?”

“Of course I have, Mark. Have you seen her? She’s gorgeous.”

Whether he knew it or not, Mark breathed a small sigh of relief. Then, he stretched his arms out as an excuse to peer around the corner. But as he viewed the scene, he frowned. 

“She doesn’t really look like she’s flirting,” he remarked as he straightened up behind the wall. “She actually looks kind of… nervous.”

“That’s the other thing,” Susan said, chancing another glance. “When she’s not laughing at her jokes, she looks like she’s just short of terrified and I have no idea why. Honestly, I had no idea anyone  _ could  _ make her look like that.”

They both considered this for a moment before they stole another not-so-surreptitious glance around the wall.

Even from afar, they could tell that the woman was imposing. She towered a good six inches over Kerry and the tightness in her jaw was matched only by the braid down her back. 

As they watched, Doug passed by the two women, his jaw clenching just as the tall woman’s eyes passed over him with scrutiny. 

“Hey, Doug,” Mark called out quietly as Doug rounded the corner. “Who’s that woman Kerry’s talking to?”

“You mean Weaver 2.0?”

“What?”

“That is Dr. Rose Elias,” he informed them both. “Our new Chief of Staff. Replacing Anspaugh.”

“Why’d you call her ‘Weaver 2.0’?” Susan asked, holding herself back from looking around the corner again.

“Because I was asked questions about ‘county investment in pediatric services’ for ten minutes straight after the staff meeting this morning. And when I finally cut her off and told her I didn’t know the answer, she looked at me for a good thirty seconds as if considering whether she was going to fire me or not.” Doug gave them both a sardonic smile. “She makes a certain red-headed Chief of Emergency Services look like a pushover.”

Doug pumped his eyebrows at them once before continuing on towards the Pedes Trauma Center. Susan, meanwhile, turned back towards Mark, her frustration giving way to understanding.

“ _ Ohhh _ , okay,” Susan said, nodding. “She’s the new Chief of Staff. I get it now. Everything’s okay.”

“You’re not mad? Just like that?”

“She’s not flirting. She’s sucking up,” Susan explained as her lips curled into a smile. “That makes a lot more sense. And I’m perfectly fine with it.”

Mark’s brow furrowed.

“If flirting and sucking up look the same, then how do you know she’s flirting with you and not sucking up to you?”

“I’m not allowed to talk about that at work, Mark.”

Susan smiled even broader at his confusion and the little bit of color that rose in his cheeks at her implications before she glanced back around the corner. When Kerry and Elias were no longer chatting near the Admit Desk, she frowned.

She had no sooner had the chance to ask where they went when she heard a very distinct, “Ah, here they are,” from behind her. 

She and Mark both spun around to find themselves face to face with the Chiefs. 

“Dr. Elias, I’d like to introduce you to two of our Emergency Attendings, Dr. Susan Lewis and Dr. Mark Greene,” Kerry said, indicating to them both in turn. “Our other Attending is Dr. Kovac, but he is not here today.”

Up close, Dr. Elias appeared even more imposing. Her expression was completely neutral. So much so, in fact, that it almost appeared that her features had been chiseled from stone.

“It is a pleasure to meet you both,” Elias said as she shook both their hands. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Susan and Mark both smiled politely, but Elias’s expression did not change. She just folded her arms and observed them with the same scrutiny with which she observed Doug. 

“Dr. Weaver tells me that County general has one of the highest ER censuses in the entire County,” Elias stated in a cold, formal tone. “Do you agree?”

Susan and Mark exchanged glances and then shrugs. 

“I’d say that sounds about right,” Mark replied. “We’re always pretty busy.”

“Mm-hmm. And do you feel that the county invests enough both in the work you do here as well as that which decreases the ER census?”

Susan and Mark exchanged glances again and then frowned. 

“Are you asking if the county gives us enough money?” Susan asked slowly, her brow furrowing.

“I am asking if you think that Cook County invests enough in emergency services and in preventative health care and social factors that contribute to high ER utilization,” Elias said in stern clarification (though it did little to clarify the question to any of the others).

“I’m… That’s not really something we’re qualified to talk about.”

Elias raised her eyebrows in question, which made the two Attendings understand Doug’s earlier remark even better.

Beside her, Kerry’s eyes were saucers. She kept glancing between Elias and the pair of physicians opposite them, her brain working to try and figure out what to say. 

“However,” Susan continued, glancing from Elias to Kerry and back, “that is something that the Chief of Emergency Services may be qualified to discuss. And County just so happens to have one that is passionate about the issue both personally and professionally.”

Susan fought off the urge to look at Kerry and wink, instead opting to just smile politely at Elias. 

“Trust me, ma’am. Dr. Weaver doesn’t read the ‘Health’ and ‘Politics’ sections of three different newspapers each morning for nothing.”

This did not appear to be the right thing to say, as Kerry’s eyes grew even wider as Elias’s eyes narrowed. 

“And how would you know that Dr. Weaver reads three different newspapers each morning, Dr. Lewis?”

Susan paused for the briefest of moments before responding with, “Dr. Weaver and I are very good friends.”

Elias considered this for a moment before letting out a clear (and pointed) huff. 

“I am of the opinion that too close of friendships between co-workers negatively affects work performance,” Elias remarked as she pulled herself up to full height. “It can easily blur the lines between the personal and the professional,  _ especially _ between bosses and their employees.”

Kerry’s expression had now surpassed “wide-eyed anxiety” in favor of “if-I-clench-my-jaw-any-tighter-I-will-break-a-tooth fear.” But Susan just kept smiling. 

“I think that being friends with your colleagues actually improves our outcomes.”

“And where did you read that, Dr. Lewis?” Elias asked, sucking in breath. 

“I didn’t read it in a journal, but I  _ have _ worked here long enough to know from experience,,” Susan replied simply. “If we didn’t get along with those we work with, then we’d constantly be fighting and frustrated. And if we’re fighting and frustrated, we’re not practicing medicine as well as we could be, which leads to poor outcomes.”

Mark and Kerry both glanced from Susan to Elias, who took a moment to carefully consider Susan’s words.

Then, to all their astonishment, Elias inclined her head in acknowledgement and replied, “Fair point,” before nodding once and continuing down the hall.

The three Attendings all watched for a moment before Mark and Susan turned back to Kerry, who let out a deep breath she had apparently been holding in.

“She has been grilling me nonstop since we walked out of the staff meeting this morning,” Kerry explained in a low voice. “I can’t seem to shake her. And I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.”

Kerry shook her head and then glanced up at her colleagues. Mark looked a little uncomfortable, but Susan was looking right at her, a big smirk plastered on her face. 

“If you’re waiting for me to say that I’m sorry for you, it’s not gonna happen,” Susan said at Kerry’s questioning frown. “This is one time that I have absolutely  _ zero  _ sympathy for you.”

“What do you mean you have zero sympathy for...” 

Kerry trailed off at the expressions on Mark and Susan’s faces. Her mouth worked wordlessly for a moment before she finally shook her head. 

“I know I can be… but I’m never…” Kerry’s expression changed to one of dawning horror. “... Am I?”

Mark gave a hesitant shrug. 

“Yeah. Kind of.”

“A lot?”

“Sometimes.”

“I’m having flashbacks as we speak,” Susan added. 

Kerry closed her eyes for a long moment, before shaking her head again. 

“I am so sorry. To both of you.”

Before she could say anything else, there was a firm, “Dr. Weaver, are you coming?” from down the hall. 

Kerry squeezed her eyes shut tightly. 

“ _ So _ sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit more Weaver self-awareness. Mostly, I just liked the idea of Kerry getting a little taste of her own medicine. (In a be-intimidated-by-your-boss sort of way, not the ways _ER_ liked to do it).
> 
> The next two are going be on the sad side. Then a happy one! And then we'll (probably) end with another sort of happy/sort of sad one. I'm aiming for fifteen chapters, but I can go further if anyone has any additional prompts. Remember, if you have a family prompt or scene you'd like to see, let me know by [messaging me on Tumblr](http://bwayfan25.tumblr.com/). 
> 
> Until next time!


	12. The Club

The department heads took their time in gathering their things up after the staff meeting ended. Or, at least, Kerry did. 

Though she was prepared to feign necessity should she be asked, she was never short a thing or two she wanted to ask Dr. Elias about. (The Chief of Staff was a renowned endocrinologist, which meant she was often away at conferences and therefore hard to get ahold of.)

But in all truth, she just didn’t feel like rushing back to the ER. 

With Mark gone and now Susan, it just didn’t feel right anymore. There were still plenty of other familiar faces, sure, but it wasn’t the same and she knew it never would be again. 

Kerry glanced around, having been pulled out of her thoughts at the realization that she was now alone in the room. But as she started for the door, she noticed that she was not alone after all as she spotted Robert Romano lingering at the far end of the table.

At the fact that they were alone together, Kerry immediately harkened back to the last time they’d stood alone together in this room. 

He’d been upset with her for speaking her mind when it came to his inevitable ascension to Chief of Staff that had then resulted in his  _ not _ ascending to Chief of Staff. Things between them had never been very pleasant to begin with, but ever since, it had been even worse. When issues between the ER and Surgery came up, their conversations were more terse and biting than ever before. 

Perhaps she was going soft. Or perhaps she was just tired and felt for the surgeon as he adjusted the strap of the sling that supported his left arm. But whatever it was, she found herself taking a step back. 

“How are you doing, Robert?”

Romano looked up, seemingly unaware that he wasn’t alone. At the sight of his guest, he gave her an acerbic smile. 

“Fan-freaking-tastic, Kerry. Thanks for asking.”

“I hear Elizabeth is coming back,” Kerry remarked, brushing off the bite in his tone as she stepped forward towards the table. “Susan was on the phone with her the other day. That’s good news isn’t it.”

Romano had clearly been prepared for a snarky or huffy retort, as he stiffened. Then, his shoulders relaxed ever so slightly.

“It is good news,” he agreed, nodding and picking up his lab coat from the back of his chair to toss over his shoulders. “Surgery’s just not right without her.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” 

She watched silently for a moment as he tried to pull the lab coat on as best he could, but he seemed to be having a difficult time doing so. She took a few steps closer to him.

“May I?”

Romano looked up at her expectant expression and shook his head. He pulled the lab coat off and tossed it on the chair in front of him again before waving her away. She nodded and turned for the door again. 

She could hear the rustling of him picking up the lab coat to try again, but he didn’t get far before she heard the  _ whap _ of the cloth smacking the table and the grunt of anger as he pushed the chair into the table with his good arm.

“Do you ever get used to it?”

Kerry stopped and turned to look at him, her brow furrowing. 

“Pardon me?”

“Do you ever get used to it?” Romano repeated.

“Used to what?”

Romano had leaned forward over the table, supporting himself with his right arm. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment before glancing up at her and letting out a sigh.

“Used to it. To… To  _ it.  _ To being…”

Kerry waited for him to finish the sentence, but he just set his jaw. 

“To being disabled?”

Romano did not look at her, but he nodded nonetheless. 

“Well, I’m not really the best person to ask. I’ve been disabled since birth, so there was never really any ‘getting used to’ anything. This is who I’ve been my entire life. It’s just how it is,” she said with a small shrug. “But I… I do have a couple friends, colleagues, who joined the club later in life. I can give you their phone numbers. They might be able to provide you some insight or advice.”

Kerry paused, waiting for a response, but it appeared none would come. She was ready to turn for the door when he looked up at her, frowning. 

“Why did you call it a ‘club’? It’s not a club.”

“It sort of is, in a way,” Kerry replied. “We’re the largest minority. And the only one you can join at any time.”

“Like becoming a lesbian in your forties?” 

“Thirties,” Kerry corrected. “And I didn’t  _ become _ a lesbian in my thirties. I just  _ figured out _ that I was a lesbian in my thirties. Similar, but not the same.”

Romano let out a small huff, which made Kerry smile slightly. 

“Let me know if you want the phone numbers.”

To her surprise, Romano let out a chuckle. 

“What?”

“All this about the phone numbers, talking to other people. What? You don’t just want to give me your own advice?” 

“Well, I figured you didn’t want  _ my  _ advice, Robert.”

“I assure you, Kerry, I never have before,” Romano said with what appeared to be his genuine sincerity in the conversation so far. “But there’s a first time for everything.”

Kerry’s brow rose in surprise. 

She took a moment to think. 

“Well, my biggest advice to read the ADA,” she stated. “Read it. Memorize it. Use it. I’ve got a copy you can borrow if you’d like.”

Romano’s brow furrowed, which made Kerry think he was actually considering it. But then he cocked his head in question.

“So, I take it that means you really did threaten to sue HR a couple years ago if they didn’t respond to one of your requests?”

Kerry grew very interested in one of her fingernails for a moment before she let out a deep sigh and nodded. 

“Not one of my prouder moments,” she admitted. “It should never come to that, but, the truth is, it’s the law. And I’ve lived enough of my life without rights. I don’t take them for granted.”

Romano observed her for a moment and then nodded. 

“Read a bunch of legalese. Got it. Anything else?”

“I would say pay attention to your health insurance premiums, but I think it would be a stretch even for the insurance companies to claim that this was a ‘pre-existing condition’.” Kerry rubbed a hand across her forehead and then down her face, shaking her head. “That phrase has bitten me in the ass more times than I care for.”

“Health insurance companies are dicks,” Romano stated. “Kerry, when I said give me advice, I meant tell me something I don’t know.”

Kerry couldn’t help but chuckle a bit as she considered any other wisdom she could impart. 

“You got anything else?” Romano asked after several minutes of contemplative silence. 

“The only other thing I can think of is… learn how to listen to your body,” Kerry thought aloud. “Learn how to listen to it, learn what your limits are, and learn how to respect them. Even if you don’t want to.”

“My limits.”

Kerry glanced at him to find him staring at the table. She took a deep breath and then nodded.

“Yes, Robert. Your limits.” She gave him a shrug. “The truth is that you have limits and you have to learn what they are. And before you say anything about them being obvious, yes, some of them will be, but might not.”

Kerry bit her lip, wondering how vulnerable she was going to allow herself to be with Robert Romano of all people. 

“I would like nothing more than to chase my children around the park for three hours straight or to give 110% at work every single day,” she said in a quieter voice. “But I know that if I do that, I’m going to end up missing out on a lot more than I gain.

“And, of course, this might not even apply to you, because even though we fall under the same umbrella, there’s a lot of diversity. But…” Kerry inhaled deeply. “But it took me a long time to recognize that. And recognize that I can’t expect other people to respect my limits if I don’t respect them myself.”

Kerry waited for a long moment for Romano to say something. She expected his characteristic snarkiness, but when he finally did speak, his voice was low and humble.

“I’ll make a note of that. Thank you, Kerry.”

Kerry blinked in surprise, but did her best not to let it show too much on her face. 

“Of course, Robert.”

She waited another brief second for him to say something before she adjusted the cuff of her crutch on her arm and turned back for the door. 

“Hey, Kerry. One more thing?”

“Hmm?”

She glanced back towards Romano to find him looking at her with curiosity.

“You said, uh, since birth?”

“Yes,” she replied, nodding. “It’s a congenital birth defect.”

Romano nodded slowly, before his brow rose. 

“Huh. I guess that means the ER rumor that you lost a knife fight really was just a rumor, wasn’t it?”

“Robert, you’re not telling me you actually  _ believed _ that, are you?”

Romano shrugged. He picked his lab coat up off the chair to sling it over his right shoulder. 

“I don’t know if it’s that I  _ believed  _ it, so much as it is that I figured if anyone was stubborn and pig-headed enough to try and fight off two armed muggers without calling the police, it would be you, Kerry.”

Kerry rolled her eyes, but smirked nonetheless.

“I appreciate your vote of confidence in me, Robert,” she remarked. “I’ll keep it in mind the next time I feel the urge to impale you with my crutch.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWO chapters? In ONE night? It's more likely than you think. 
> 
> So, a couple things about this chapter:  
> 1) I told my fiance that I was using the line "Health insurance companies are dicks," and he asked me if it was for an academic paper. I sadly told him no, but that I would look for the opportunity should it arise. 
> 
> 2) I think this was a scene that we should have had in canon. Of course, this chapter has references to AU elements, but it just as easily could go without. I think it would have been a really good moment for both Kerry and Romano. I kept waiting for it throughout Season 9 but it never came. Hence, fanfiction.
> 
> 3) The whole "respect your limits" thing is 100% directed at myself. I am hypermobile, meaning that a lot of my joints sometimes feel like they have minds of their own. They move around when they shouldn't and don't stay in place all the time. For the most part, it's fine and doesn't cause much issue with working out or being active, but I am reminded from time to time that I can easily go overboard and cause problems for myself. Like last spring, when I got _really_ into running and ended up accidentally moving my SI joint out of place and pushing one-half of my pelvis forward for six months. I would say 'Thank God for PT' (and I will), but even just last week, I specifically _didn't_ listen to my PT when she said to take it slow and tried to push myself too far too fast and... almost caused all of this again.
> 
> All that is to say that part of this chapter is just advice to myself to maybe _not_ try to run a mile when the healthcare professional says not to yet, or I will have to pay a lot of money to go through PT again. And while I really liked my physical therapist (because she listened to me), per my earlier point, health insurance companies are dicks. 
> 
> Anyways, it's past my bedtime. I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> Until next time.


	13. Atonement

Susan was very glad that they hadn’t held the funeral in a church. 

For the most part, it was due to the fact that her family had never been very religious, Chloe least of all, so having a church funeral wouldn’t have felt right. But the other part, the selfish part she didn’t care to admit, knew that she preferred the small graveside service over a church service out of her immense guilt. 

She wasn’t too keen on the idea of God, but the part of her that believed there might be something out there was worried about being smited. And while some would believe this fear was due to personal factors that many of the God-fearing public had not yet come to accept, in all truth, her fear was rooted in the fact that, if there was a God, that God knew what she had done (or didn’t do) and would inevitably deem her unworthy of mourning at her sister’s funeral. 

At the very least, Susan didn’t feel she deserved to sit in the front row. 

The front row was reserved for close family. Family that cared. Family that hadn’t left the deceased high and dry for five years. 

(Of course, what Susan  _ didn’t _ know was that none of the people in the front row felt that they necessarily deserved to be there either.)

There wasn’t going to be a wake.

Susan figured it was probably due to the fact that there just weren’t enough mourners to warrant one, but she wondered too if it was because her parents just couldn’t afford it. 

At the though, even more guilt settled on her shoulders. 

She’d become so accustomed to the household income of two senior physicians that she rarely though about the need of her childhood. It had never been outright, as in they never missed meals, but there had never been any excess either. 

She could probably pay all of the expenses for the funeral  _ and _ the wake out of one paycheck and not blink an eye. If only she’d brought her checkbook.

People around her began moving, which snapped Susan out of her trance of guilt. 

She would have to stay for at least a little while, she thought. People who hadn’t gotten the chance to pay their condolences prior to the service would want to catch her afterwards. To tell her that they were sorry for her loss and were sorry that they didn’t know how bad things had gotten with Chloe. How sad they were that she had never quite managed to kick her habits and how they wished things could have been different. 

But that was the problem. That was what made Susan feel the worst. It made her feel worse than not speaking to her for five years or not calling her to see if she’d managed to stay clean or allowing her to be part of Suzie’s life. 

No, what made Susan feel the worst was that, if she was being completely honest with herself, she wasn’t sure if she wished things had been different. 

That wasn’t to say that she  _ wanted _ Chloe to die, because she definitely didn’t wish for that, but she wouldn’t go back and change anything else either. Chloe had always been unstable, an uncontrolled variable that Susan could never predict or account for. 

At the time, abandoning Suzie with her had felt like the worst possible thing Chloe could do, but it turned out to be the best blessing Susan had never asked for. That choice on that summer night so long ago had given her a daughter, led to her finding love, and changed her life for the better. 

“Suze.”

Susan looked around for the owner of the voice and found only her father nearby. Her mother stood near a tree several feet away, her expression unreadable.

“Yeah, Dad?” Susan asked quietly as Henry Lewis shifted uncomfortably in front of her.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Henry said with a sad smile. “I’m… I’m glad you came.”

Susan’s instinct was to reply with “Of course,” but she was sure if she said it, her father wouldn’t believe her. So, instead, she just nodded solemnly.

“I’d have thought you’d bring Suzie with you.”

Susan inhaled deeply and then shook her head.

“I.... I haven’t told Suzie yet.”

The sadness on Henry’s face deepened at the statement.

“Why not? She… Her mother died.”

The words struck like ice straight into Susan’s heart, first the pain of the words and then the cold of guilt that seemed to fill her even more. 

“Suzie never really knew her. As far as…” Susan let out a sigh. “As far as Suzie knows, Chloe has only ever done three things: Given birth to her, named her after me, and trusted her to me when she couldn’t take care of her.”

The words made that cold guilt even chillier. 

Was that really all Suzie knew about Chloe? And if it was, then whose fault was that?

“I’m sorry, Dad. I’m really sorry.”

The words came out of her mouth before Susan could stop them. And though they were meant for him, she knew in her heart that they were meant more for someone else. Someone who would never get the chance to hear them.

“I’m the one who should be sorry, Suze.” Henry shook his head slightly. “Back when… Back when Chl- when your sister came back, I… I should have supported you more. I knew everything you went through and I should have stood by you. I was just so excited to have you both there and safe that I… I ended up pushing you away.”

Susan felt emotion rise in her throat. 

“I lost track of her, Suze. I lost track of her and-” Henry swallowed hard. “I should have done more to find her and make sure she was… But I didn’t and now... “

Susan bit her lip hard as tears threatened to fall from her father’s eyes. 

He shook his head again, before looking up at her with deep, true sorrow in his eyes. 

“I don’t want that to happen again.”

Susan unlocked the front door and led Henry inside the house.

It was unusually quiet for a day when Kerry was supposed to be home with the girls. And as her car was still in the driveway, they had either walked to the park or had gone in the backyard to enjoy the warmth of a sunny May afternoon. 

“Suze, you’ve got a real nice place here,” Henry remarked as he and Susan stepped into the living room. “You can afford this all on your own?”

“No,” Susan replied, shaking her head. “There’s two of us, me and Kerry. You remember Kerry?”

“The redheaded gal you used to live who’d come pick Suzie up sometimes?” Henry asked, his brow furrowing. “The one with the cane?”

Susan nodded, but still bristled slightly as she always did whenever someone used Kerry’s crutch as a way to identify her. (She told herself that it was out of protection, as Kerry didn’t appreciate it very much, but Susan knew it was also guilt as she knew too that she did it at times herself.)

“I’m kind of surprised you two still live together,” Henry said as he stepped further into the house. “I’d have thought you’d have moved on by now. You know, fallen in love, gotten married. That sort of thing.”

“I did fall in love,” Susan replied. “That’s why I didn’t move out.”

Henry frowned for a moment. His mouth twitched like he was going to say something but, whether because he didn’t feel strongly about it or simply because he finally had the chance to see his granddaughter for the first time in five years, he said nothing. 

“I see,” he said after a long moment of silence. “So, it’s… It’s you and her and Suzie, then?”

“And our younger daughter Charlotte. Charlotte Henrietta.” Susan took a deep breath and smiled slightly. “ We call her Charlie, but… but we would have named her Henry if she’d been a boy.”

Henry’s brow rose in surprise. His mouth fell open just slightly.

“Both of our dads were named Henry. It just made sense.”

Henry stared for a brief moment before he smiled slightly and nodded.

“That’s… That’s wonderful,” he said quietly, his voice threatening to break with emotion.

“You want to meet her?”

Henry nodded, leading Susan to step forward into the living room to look out the sliding glass door on the far side of the room. Then, she waved Henry to follow her. 

As she stepped out onto the back deck, she could see the girls out in the yard, beating the grass with fallen tree branches. It was no doubt a harm reduction technique employed to allow them to get out their aggressions without the tree branches getting turned on each other. 

Kerry was seated on a blanket on the left hand side of the yard. Her proximity to the garden bed and the tote of tools nearby indiciated her intent to weed. But they sat unused as she had instead decided to watch the girls with an amused (if also confused) look on her face.

Susan led Henry down the stairs from the deck towards Kerry. At the sound of footsteps on wood, Kerry looked up and smiled, but the smile was short-lived and quickly gave way to more confusion. 

“Kerry, do you remember my dad?”

Kerry made to get up. She held out a hand, which Susan took to help pull her up. Kerry then dusted herself off and offered a hand to Henry.

“Of course. It’s good to see you again, sir.”

“Good to, uh… Good to see you too,” Henry said, shaking her hand. “I told Suze that I was kind of surprised that you two still lived together. She told me that, uh… Well, she told me why.”

Henry looked from Kerry to Susan and back with a small smile on his face. 

“I guess so…” Henry inhaled deeply. “I guess so long as you’re happy, yeah?”

Kerry nodded. She opened her mouth to ask how he was when there was a sudden chorus of “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”

All three adults turned to see Suzie happily running towards them, followed closely by Charlie. 

“Mommy, I found a really big stick!” Suzie said proudly, pointing towards the fallen branch she had dropped in her excitement. “It’s  _ really _ big. Charlie found one too, but mine is bigger. It’s not just bigger than Charlie’s stick, but it’s bigger than  _ Charlie _ .”

It was at this point that Suzie noticed their guest. Her smile faltered almost immediately as her happiness was replaced with shyness. She even started to step sideways a bit, as if she was going to try and hide behind Kerry’s legs.

“Suzie, this is Mommy’s daddy. Your grandpa,” Susan introduced, motioning towards Henry. 

“You sure have gotten big, Suzie,” Henry said with a small wave and a chuckle. 

Suzie frowned and glanced up at Susan for clarification. She was a child, and therefore did not find it unusual for grownups to comment on how much she had grown, but always  _ did _ find it skeptical when the comment came from grownups she didn’t recognize.

“He hasn’t seen you since you were a baby,” Susan explained.

“ _ Ohhh _ .” Suzie nodded and then her brow furrowed. “Yeah. I’m not a baby anymore.  _ Charlie’s  _ not even a baby anymore.”

Henry nodded as Susan chuckled and scooped the toddler in question up into her arms. 

Charlie looked at Henry for a moment and then cocked her head to the side.

“Who you?”

“Charlie, this is Mommy’s daddy.”

Charlie considered this for a moment and then looked from Henry to Susan and then to Kerry, before looking back at Susan once more. A look of confusion and question was clear on her face. 

“Don’t have daddy.”

“ _ You _ don’t have a daddy, but Mommy has a daddy,” Susan confirmed, poking Charlie gently in the stomach before pointing at herself.

Charlie seemed to understand this as she nodded several times. Then, she looked at Henry and pointed at the stick she had been playing with.

“Wanna see stick?”

Henry chuckled as Susan put Charlie back down. She immediately took off running (as she was wont to do). When she arrived, she held her stick aloft with pride. 

Henry followed Charlie as Susan and Kerry took seats on the blanket. Susan expected Suzie to follow him to show off her own bigger-than-her-sister’s-and-also-her-sister stick, but she hung back, her face alight with hesitation. And once Susan had sat down, Suzie made for her. 

Susan raised a hand, now expecting Suzie to sit on her lap, but Suzie remained standing, choosing instead to tuck herself into her mother’s side. 

“Mommy, why is your daddy here?” she asked in a very low whisper.

Susan let out a sigh and wrapped an arm around Suzie.

“He was feeling sad and wanted to come see you, so Mommy brought him over to visit.”

“Why was he feeling sad? Because of Uncle Mark?”

“No, honey,” she replied softly. “He’s feeling sad about Aunt Chloe.”

Suzie frowned. 

“Did she die too?”

Susan sucked in breath. Tears welled in her eyes as she nodded.

“Yes, honey. She did.”

Suzie nodded slowly. 

“Was she sick too? Like Uncle Mark?”

Susan pulled Suzie a bit closer to her. 

“Not quite the same way, but, yeah. She was sick too.”

Suzie’s expression grew even more solemn.

“I didn’t know that.”

“Me neither.”

Susan felt the tears roll down her cheeks and wondered how they could feel so warm when that same cold guilt was rising in her again. 

There was a moment of silence before Susan felt both Kerry lay a gentle hand at the small of her back at the same time Suzie pressed closer to her.

Susan looked up at her to see that same solemn expression, but now with a deeper furrow to her little brow.

“What’s wrong, my love?”

Suzie played with her lip with one of her fingers.

“Mommy, can I ask you a question?”

“Of course,” Susan said, unconsciously brushing a hair out of Suzie’s face. “What is it?”

“Am I supposed to feel sad?”

The words on their own would have made Susan’s heart freeze and then shatter, but for some reason, the amount of confusion and concern in the young girl’s voice was enough to distract her from the ice rising inside her. 

“You’re not supposed to feel any certain way, my love,” Susan said in a voice so low only Suzie could hear it. “You might feel sad. You might not.”

Suzie continued to pick at her lip.

“Well, I know Aunt Chloe gave birth to me and that means she’s one of my mommies too,” Suzie said slowly. “But-But I don’t know her so I don’t feel that sad... Is… Is that okay?”

“Yes, honey. That’s okay.”

“I do feel sad though, because  _ you _ feel sad,” Suzie continued. “Because Aunt Chloe was your sister and Charlie is  _ my _ sister and I would feel really sad if Charlie died. So, I would think you would be sad too because your sister died. And you being sad makes me feel sad.

“And also, I’m sad because people dying makes me think of Uncle Mark and that makes me sad too.”

By all reason, the mention of Mark should have made Susan feel even sadder. But the glowing pride within her lit by Suzie’s words had begun melting the icy guilt. 

“That’s a very grownup way to feel, Suzie,” Susan said, pulling Suzie’s face closer to hers so that she could kiss her on the cheek. 

“So, you do feel sad about Aunt Chloe?”

Susan could feel that tinge of cold again at the honest curiosity in Suzie’s tone, but she just pulled the girl onto her lap and wrapped her arms around her. 

“Yes, my love,” she said quietly, gently resting her chin on Suzie’s shoulder. She could feel the tears welling in her eyes again. “I feel very sad about Aunt Chloe. But I’ve felt sad about Aunt Chloe for a long time. Since even before she died.”

Suzie rested her head against Susan’s. Susan took a deep breath and squeezed Suzie tighter to her. 

“But even though I feel sad about Aunt Chloe, there’s one thing that Aunt Chloe gave me that makes me very, very happy,” Susan whispered to Suzie. “Something that I love so, so,  _ so _ much. And that thing is the best thing that Aunt Chloe ever gave me. In fact, it’s the best thing that  _ anyone _ has ever given me. And you know what that thing is?”

Suzie picked her head up and looked at Susan, before cuddling deeper into her arms. 

“Me.”

“Yes. You.” Susan kissed Suzie on her forehead. “You are the best gift anyone has given me, Suzie.”

Suzie smiled and then squirmed in Susan’s arms. But Susan continued to hug her tight for a long moment. 

“You know, I haven’t seen your really big stick yet,” Susan mused as she released Suzie from the hug. 

Immediately, Suzie hopped up onto her feet. 

“It’s  _ really _ big,” she said emphatically. “It’s bigger than Charlie.”

“And I want to see it,” Susan said encouragingly. “Go get it.”

Suzie nodded quickly before turning for the patch of grass where she’d left her tree branch and where Charlie was now showing Henry how to hit the ground like they’d been doing earlier.

At Suzie’s absence, Kerry took the opportunity to scoot closer to Susan. Susan accepted the cheek kiss she got in greeting, but continued to look at where Henry, Charlie, and now Suzie were all playing together. 

“How many swipes did they get in before you convinced them to hit the ground?”

“Luckily none. I heard it coming, though, so I had to act fast,” Kerry replied. “I told them that if they hit their sticks into the grass, it would make it easier for you to mow.”

“I thought it was your turn to mow.”

Kerry chuckled and rolled her eyes, but only after a cursory glance to see if Susan was kidding or not. 

“So?”

Susan looked at Kerry, who then nodded towards the grandfather playing with his granddaughters. 

Susan inhaled deeply and interlaced her fingers in Kerry’s. 

“He told me he didn’t want to lose track of another daughter and I figured I probably wasn’t doing him any favors.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, y'all. Hope this fine Thursday evening is treating you well. 
> 
> I was coming up with some ideas about different prompts for this and I realized that, as much as I enjoyed exploring the ER staff as family, I would be doing a disservice if I didn't involve any biological family.
> 
> If you've read the AU, you'd know that Susan cuts ties with her father and sister early on and instead relies on her found family for support. But her biological family never truly goes away, as not just does she have Suzie, but her having Suzie means that Chloe _doesn't_ have Suzie. And without Suzie to call for help in Season 8, Susan loses both her best friend and her sister in a very short timespan. And of those deaths, one was expected and one she felt responsible for. 
> 
> Family takes many shapes and forms. It's dynamic and while some things never change, others change a lot. I write to do honor to the concept of family and how we as a species need each other so much that we build families. Sometimes we build them off of the tree we are rooted from and sometimes we plant new saplings and start a new forest. 
> 
> I'm still open to prompts if you have them. The next one planned will be much more light-hearted and silly. If I don't receive any requests (and don't think of any more prompts on my own), the fifteenth will be the final chapter, which I'm very excited about. We'll leave it open for now though. 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading. Until next time.


	14. Feats of Strength

Mark pulled his hat off and shook the snow off of it, marveling at how much could accumulate in just the short walk from the El to the Ambulance Bay doors. 

After he stowed his things in his locker and pulled on his lab coat, he made for the Admit Desk only to marvel at how the snow could not only blanket the city in a matter of minutes but could also render the board completely empty. 

It must have been empty for a while, given how most of the staff not playing guaze-ball soccer in the hallway or sleeping in empty exam rooms had congregated in a circle at one end of the Admit Desk.

Susan and Carmen were seated with their feet propped up on chairs on the empty side of the counter, perpendicular to the group. 

The circle turned out not to be a group of staff casually chatting to pass the time, but rather a group of onlookers watching Chen and Malucci arm wrestle. 

“Hard at work, I see,” Mark commented as he pulled up a chair next to Susan. “What’s going on?”

“Susan’s abusing her power,” Carter informed him from his place in the circle.

“Abusing her power as an Attending or as a pregnant woman?” Mark asked, looking at Susan.

She smiled.

“Yes.” 

Chen grunted as she tried to force Malucci’s arm back the other way, but Malucci didn’t give in. A second later, her hand hit the counter. 

The group erupted in a mix of sheers and growans. A few pulled out a couple singles and begrudgingly slapped them into the hand of another. 

“Okie doke, that means Malucci moves onto the final round,” Carmen said, writing his name onto the final line of the bracket she’d scribbled onto the back of a scrap piece of paper. “We’re down to the final two: Malucci versus Malik.”

“Take a couple minutes, Dave,” Susan instructed before turning to Mark. “I am making the residents fight for my entertainment.”

“Why?”

“Because I was bored,” Susan said with a shrug. “They drew straws first. Carter drew the shortest one, so he had to go get me lunch, but that meant he was exempt from having to compete. The rest of the residents had to arm wrestle for dominance.”

“So, why is Malik competing?”

“Because he wanted to.”

Mark chuckled, before picking up one of the (cold) fries from the Doc Magoo’s carry-out container abandoned on the floor next to Susan’s chair.

“Why aren’t you joining in Carmen?” 

“She’s my co-commissioner,” Susan explained.

“Also, I didn’t want to,” Carmen added. “I am not a resident and therefore not required to listen to Susan if I don’t want to.”

Mark smiled and picked up another (cold) fry from the box.

“As I doubt this is ER-sanctioned, is she not here or are you just banking on her not finding out?”

“Oh, no. She’s here. She’s just sitting over there looking at a catalogue of Durable Medical Equipment and pretending she doesn’t know what’s going on,” Susan replied, pointing to the far side of the Admit Desk. She turned and raised her voice a bit. “What was that phrase you used, Kerry?”

“Plausible deniability,” Kerry called back. 

Susan looked back at Mark, who raised his eyebrows. 

“If she pretends not to know what we’re doing, then she can’t get in trouble if someone gets hurt,” Susan explained before her eyes flashed with excitement. “And someone _could_ get hurt.”

“Susan, I think you’re drunk with power.”

“Well, I can’t get drunk on anything else, so this is the best I can do,” Susan said, rubbing a hand over her protruding stomach. “I’ll say though, that if this is how being drunk with power feels, it explains why Kerry likes it so much.”

_“I heard that.”_

Susan’s grin turned mischievous.

“Are we ready for the final round?” Malucci asked, stretching his arms like he was warming up for a basketball game.

“I’m ready,” Malik said before cracking his knuckles and shaking his arms out.

Mark and Carmen looked at Susan, who nodded.

Malik and Malucci took their places on opposite sides of the counter and clasped hands. Susan gave the word and they set to work trying to push the other’s arm down.

It lasted considerably longer than his bout against Chen, but in the end, Malucci still prevailed.

“That means I’m the champion, right?” Malucci asked, peering over Carmen’s shoulder at the bracket. “I beat Malik which means I won.”

“You won the tournament,” Susan said, pulling her feet down from the chair. “But as the winner of the tournament, that means you now must face the secret challenger.”

“Who, you?”

“Nope.” Susan pushed herself up from the chair. “Let me go get them.”

Malucci looked surprised, but shrugged. Sisan rose from her chair, breathing deeply, before turning for the far side of the desk. All eyes were on her as she crossed towards Kerry. 

She paused at Kerry’s shoulder and watched for several seconds as she flipped back and forth in the catalogue, seemingly comparing two nearly-identical forearm crutches.

When she sensed someone standing over her, she looked up and jolted in surprise.

“How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough to know that you’re trying to choose between two of the exact same crutch.”

“No, I’m not,” Kerry said with a tinge of defensiveness in her voice. “This one has a different grip than the other one.”

“Mmm-hmm. Right. Well, I think you should get this one,” Susan said, pointing at the catalogue. “Specifically the pink one.”

“I am not getting a pink crutch.”

“Okay, fine. The green one then.”

“What do you want, Susan?” Kerry said, quickly closing the catalogue and looking up at her with an exasperated expression on her face.

“I need you to come arm wrestle Dave Malucci for me.”

Kerry blinked.

“No.”

“Please?”

“No,” Kerry repeated firmly. “I am not going to… No. Just no.”

 _“Please?_ It’ll only take you like two seconds,” Susan said pleadingly.

There was a snort from somewhere near the group. Susand and Kerry both turned to look and saw Malucci with his arms crossed looking smug.

“What was that for, Dr. Malucci?”

“Well…” Malucci began with a shrug. “No offense, Chief, but even if you _could_ beat me in arm wrestling, you couldn’t do it in two seconds.”

Kerry stared at him for a moment before scoffing in disbelief. At this, Susan’s excitement grew tenfold.

“You’re going to do it now, aren’t you?”

“Well, now I have to, don’t I?”

Susan rubbed her hands together with glee, before whispering, “And I didn’t even tell him to say that.” 

She and Kerry then made their way back towards the group. 

Kerry pointed Malucci to the other side of the counter. He made his way around as instructed just as Kerry pulled over a stool. She set her crutch against the counter and then began to pull off her lab coat.

“Uh-oh, Dave. I think that means she means business,” Chen commented, glancing at Malucci out of the side of her eye. 

“I assure you I never mean anything _but_ business,” Kerry stated as she tossed her lab coat over top the stool and took a seat. 

There were a few chuckles and oohs as Kerry put her elbow on the counter, her hand open. She raised her eyebrows expectantly.

“You don’t want to stand up?” Malucci asked skeptically as he stepped closer to the counter. “You know, brace yourself better.”

“No. You’ll find I don’t need to.”

“Okay then,” Malucci said with a shrug before he leaned forward and clasped Kerry’s hand. “You sure about this?”

“I am. Are you?”

Those in the audience who had not yet placed their bets muttered to each other as the pair prepared for the showdown. All except Susan, who was now fit to burst with excitement.

She was about to count them down when Malucci’s grip relaxed and he straightened up, shaking his head. 

“I can’t do this. I don’t want to hurt you.”

The smirk that had curled Kerry’s lips grew.

“I think you should be more concerned that I’m going to hurt you.”

“ _God_ , this is even better than my birthday,” Susan said in a voice that was nearly a squeal. 

Kerry looked at her and frowned.

“I thought you enjoyed your birthday.”

“I did, but this is better.”

Relieved, Kerry looked back at her challenger, who seemed to still be considering his next move. It took a long moment, but finally (and to the group’s great pleasure), he sighed and resumed his position at the counter once more. 

“Alright,” Susan said, taking a deep breath to try and calm herself. “On your mark… Get set… Go.”

At first, it appeared that nothing had happened.

Neither Kerry nor Malucci moved at all, and the group was almost convinced they hadn’t heard Susan’s instruction, when Malucci’s eyes grew wide. 

“How? But-but… how?” he grunted.

“Something wrong, Dave?” Kerry asked in a simple tone that was also clearly dripping with pride.

Malucci was now shaking with effort. The bicep beneath his scrub shirt was as tense as he could make it, and yet, he still hadn’t budged Kerry’s arm an inch.But as soon as he was about to give in, he started to make some headway.

It was slow, but he was nonetheless moving it closer to the counter. But when he was nearly victorious, he couldn’t make it go any farther. 

The crowd watched as he pushed with all the might he could muster for a solid thirty seconds. Sweat was starting to gather on his forehead, while all the while, Kerry just looked at him with smug amusement. If it wasn’t for the effort Dave was having in trying to win, no one watching would even have known she was doing anything.

“Alright,” Mark said at the sight of how red Malucci’s face was getting from exertion. “I think he’s had enough.”

Kerry looked as if she might say something like that she was just starting to have fun when she gave a small shrug. Less than a second later, Malucci’s hand hit the counter hard.

The group watching cheered. Except for Malucci, of course, who looked ready to collapse from exhaustion and was rubbing his arm muscles gingerly. 

“I… I’m really impressed, Chief.”

“Thank you, Dave, but it wasn’t really a fair fight,” Kerry said, rising from her stool and picking up her lab coat. “My right arm has been supporting most of my body weight for nearly four decades.”

“Also, she swims. You should see her shoulders” Susan added, appearing at Kerry’s side. “Last week, she was swimming laps while Suzie was at swim lessons and when she got out-”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Kerry said, raising a hand to cut Susan off (as if she said anything else, Kerry was liable to start blushing.)

Susan crossed her arms and pretended to pout, which would usually have led Kerry to roll her eyes and kiss her, but seeing as they were at work, she had to settle for the little bit of color that crept into Kerry’s cheeks despite her efforts to the contrary.

“Well, at least I still won the tournament,” Malucci conceded. 

“Yes, you did,” Kerry acknowledged with a nod. “And it was a bit unfair for Dr. Lewis to have you challenge me, seeing as she said a long time ago that she would never arm wrestle me.”

“I said that _I_ didn’t want to arm wrestle you,” Susan said. “I never said I didn’t want other people to do it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit more fluff, because I was reminded of Susan's line in "What Life?" where Kerry uses a crowbar to get part of a machine off of an industrial worker's arm and Susan's response was "Remind me never to arm wrestle you" or something like that. Also, Kerry Weaver is never one to turn down a little competition (friendly or otherwise) and Dave Malucci is just smug enough to be the person to challenge her. 
> 
> I've got a few prompts, so there'll be a few more chapters before the last one. If you think of any, you can message me or comment and I'll see what I can come up with. 
> 
> Also, it's the day after Valentine's Day which means:
> 
> 1) It's International Fanworks Day! I am incredibly grateful that fanworks and fanfiction specifically exist. Fanfiction helped transform writing from something I hated to the only thing that keeps me sane. It is the reason I found my voice as a writer and it's the reason I can say that I've not only written two fanficiton novels but an original one as well.
> 
> 2) It's Charlie Lewis's birthday! If the events of "All in the Family" took place on Valentine's Day 2000, that means the same goes for the AU version of the events. And because it's 2020, that means 2000 was _twenty years ago_ _!_ In other words, what the fuck. (Also, we’re gonna focus on the AU and not what this would mean in canon, otherwise we’d all get sad.)
> 
> Hope everyone is having a good day so far. Until next time.


	15. Wake-Up Call

_ “Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, bananaphone. Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, bananaphone. I've got this feeling, so appealing. For us to get together and sing, sing.” _

Carter blinked awake. 

_ “Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, bananaphone. Ding dong, ding dong, ding dong, ding, donanaphone. It grows in bunches, I've got my hunches. It's the best, beats the rest, cellular, modular, interactivodular.” _

Slowly, he rolled over and clicked on the lamp. He picked up the watch on his bedside table and squinted at the time: 5:30 am.

_ “Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, bananaphone. Ping pong, ping pong, ping pong, ping, pananaphone. It's no baloney, it ain't a phony. My cellular bananular phone.” _

He sat up and stretched before getting up and pulling his robe off the hook on the back of the door. 

He made his way upstairs, blinking in the light of the hallway and then of the kitchen.

“Good morning, Carter,” Kerry greeted brightly from where she stood on the opposite side of the island from him.

“Good morning, Carter!” Suzie echoed, bouncing up and down from her perch on a kitchen stool. 

“Morning,” he mumbled in reply.

The KitchenAid on the island into which Suzie was pouring flour explained the whirring noise intermixed with the music.

“We’re making pancakes!” Suzie informed him excitedly. 

“I see that,” Carter said, nodding slightly before crossing past the kitchen towards the sound system on the opposite wall. 

_ “Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, bananaphone. Yin yang, yin yang, yin yang, ying, yonanaphone. It's a real live mama and papa phone, a brother and sister. And a dogaphone, a grandpaphone and a grandmaphone too, oh yeah.” _

“And, uh, who is this singing?” Carter asked loudly, pointing towards the CD player. 

“Raffi,” Kerry called back. “Suzie’s choice.”

Suzie nodded happily as Carter started back towards the kitchen.

“Don’t you think it’s a little early for music?” he asked, taking a seat at an empty stool on the island. 

“You’re on at seven aren’t you?” Kerry asked, flipping the switch on the KitchenAid to beat the mix on low. 

“Yeah, but it’s…”

_ “I’m not. Turn it OFF.” _

No sooner than Carter had turned to see who had interrupted him than a throw pillow hit the side of the island with a  _ thwap _ .

“You missed,” Kerry called out to Susan’s retreating form.

But, despite her smirk, she  _ did _ pick up the remote and turn the music down to a reasonable volume. She turned back to Carter just as the door to the master bedroom opened again and Susan poked her head out again.

“I said  _ OFF.” _

“After the song ends,” Kerry said, waving her away.

Susan cast her a very dark look before the door slammed shut.

“Mommy doesn’t like getting up early,” Suzie explained to Carter in a very sincere tone.

“Yeah…” Carter said with a stretch. “Most people don’t.”

Carter paused the note he was writing on the chart in his hand to try and stifle a yawn. 

“What’s wrong, Carter?” Susan asked as she rounded the corner on him, a frustrated smile on her face. “You tired or something?”

“I owe you an apology. I always assumed you looked so tired because of Suzie.” Carter yawned again as Susan assumed an affronted look of question. “I guess I never told you that, but I thought it.”

Susan narrowed her eyes at him for a moment before shaking her head.

“How long has this been going on?” 

“It’s recent,” Susan said, rolling her eyes. “Kerry didn’t do this when Suzie was a baby, mostly because I had a very strict ‘Never wake a sleeping baby’ rule. But now the baby isn’t a baby anymore and  _ also _ wants to get up incredibly early, which puts me in a bind.

“Because on one hand, if Suzie wants to get up early  _ and _ Kerry wants to get up early, that means  _ I _ don’t have to get up early. But if I let them get up early, then this happens.”

“Have you tried addressing it with her?” Carter suggested. 

Susan stared at him for a moment and then smiled. 

“Oh, Carter. You’re so funny.”

“I wasn’t kidding?” Carter said slowly.

“I know. But I have to pretend you are so I don’t slap you.” Susan closed her eyes. “This  _ is _ my addressing it. I’ve gotten them to agree not to do this more than once a week, and if you’ll notice, you’ve been with us for what… three? And this is the first time it’s happening. 

“So, since they are upholding their end of the bargain, it’s up to me to respect while still expressing my discontent.

“Susan, you threw a pillow at them and missed.”

“I didn’t  _ miss _ . I wasn’t aiming at them,” Susan corrected. “The pillow was a message.”

“I think you’d have sent a stronger message if you’d hit someone.

“Who would have me hit, Carter? My young daughter who was kneeling on a stool even though I’ve told her a million times not to do that or my disabled wife who is actually far easier to knock over than she appears?” Susan asked, raising her eyebrows. “Who would  _ you _ have thrown it at? And if you say Suzie, I will murder you in your sleep.”

Carter unconsciously took a step back, raising his hands defensively. 

“Okay, okay,” he said with a small shrug. Then, he sighed. “But I still think you could have done more.”

Susan shook her head. 

“You know what? You live with us now. If you want more done, _you_ do it,” Susan said, poking him in the chest. “If you can get Kerry to promise that this will never happen again and _mean_ _it,_ you will be my hero. And if not, you will die to me.”

“Isn’t the phrase, ‘You will be dead to me’?” 

“Usually,” Susan acknowledged with a shrug. “But in this case, it’s a little passive for my taste.”

_ The next day… _

Susan slapped her hands down on the counter in front of Mark. 

“Where is he?”

“Where is who?”

“Don’t play games with me, Mark. You know who I’m looking for,” Susan said in a low growl. “Where is Carter?”

“Who’s Carter?”

Susan straightened up and looked Mark up and down, her eyes narrowing.

“Oh, I see. You’re protecting him. Well… I’m gonna find him and when I’m done, you’re next.”

“Oh, you mean  _ that _ Carter,” Mark replied loudly as he caught sight of the resident out of the corner of his eye. “I, uh, I think I saw him heading upstairs to check on a patient.”

Susan continued to look at Mark for a long moment and then nodded. 

“Thank you, Mark.” Susan inclined her head at him, but then raised a finger at him. “But you’re still next.”

Mark waited until Susan had made her way down the hall before he looked down at where Carter had ducked for cover in the gap underneath the Admit Desk. 

“What did you do?” he asked as Carter hopped up from his hiding place, stretching his neck and back. 

“I  _ tried _ is what I did,” Carter replied emphatically before sneaking a glance around the desk. “But in my defense, I had to get up early again and they promised to put chocolate chips in the pancakes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short and sweet! 
> 
> This chapter came as a prompt from the lovely everybodyknows-everybodydies. She asked about Kerry's very early morning blender antics and how that would work with Susan and Suzie. I briefly alluded to it in the AU when discussing all that Carter learned when moving into the Weaver-Lewis household, but at the request decided to expand on it a little bit. 
> 
> I'm excited about the next two chapters. I won't say much other than that they are both prompts as well and that the next one is going to be a bit angsty and give a very different (but hopefully still realistic) side to Kerry and Susan's relationship that I don't think I've explored too much. All I will say is that it's another prompt about Kerry being sick and when I started speaking the dialogue outloud to get ideas flowing, it took a _very_ different direction than expected but I like it a lot. 
> 
> You guys have gifted me with a lot of prompts, but if you have more, let me know. I may mix them up and combine some. Depends on how the muse(s) move me. 
> 
> Have a good rest of your night (or day)! Until next time.


	16. Okay

The man on the gurney was shrieking nearly as loud as the monitor, which should not be possible. But the human body was a fascinating (and frightening) thing.

“Can we please sedate him so we can shock him?” Carter asked as he and Malik tried to wrestle the man into restraints.

“We can’t shock a conscious patient,” Kovac called out over the din. 

He was attempting to insert a tube into the man’s chest, but given that the man continued to move about, he was finding it quite difficult to complete the task.

“That’s… why I said… sedate him,” Carter grunted as he forced the man’s arm into the restraint.

“Haldol?” Kovac called out. “Can someone get me 2 mg Haldol IM?”

“We’re a bit busy,” Susan called back through the open door to the next trauma room. 

She and Abby were exerting their own effort in trying to restrain a young woman who was shrieking nearly as loud as the man. However, her injuries consisted only of a small leg laceration, as opposed to the man in the next room who sported a large chunk of wood protruding from his chest. (The phencyclidine in his system off-set most of the pain and also  _ notice _ of said chunk of wood.)

“I’m gonna  _ die _ . I’m gonna  _ die,” _ the young woman cried out as she wrestled against the physician and nurse that were attempting to subdue her. “Oh, Lord, I’m gonna  _ die.” _

“You are not gonna die,” Susan tried to assure her. “It’s just a cut. All you need is a few stitches.”

“You’re lying. I’m gonna  _ dieeeeee.” _

“Can someone please page Psych?” Abby shouted. 

Susan held out an open hand. She did not specify her request outloud, but the other staff around figured it was likely the same as Dr. Kovac’s.

“What have we got?” a familiar voice asked, though it was far raspier than usual. 

Susan looked up for a brief moment to see Kerry at the foot of the trauma table. The syringe of Haldol in her hand hovered forgotten over the patient’s exposed arm.

But where usually the sight of Kerry left Susan with a rush of relief, today, seeing her at work instead of at home in bed where she should be, it rose not relief but anger.

“What are you doing here?” she hissed before the patient in front of her jerked and Susan’s attention was pulled back to the injection she was supposed to be administering.

“Working,” Kerry replied before turning her head away to cough several times into her elbow. 

“You should be at home,” Susan said firmly. “I thought you said you weren’t coming in today.”

The patient began to relax and she and Abby were able to lay her down on the trauma table without fear of additional thrashing.

“I felt better than I expected to,” Kerry said, pretending not to notice the way her voice cracked when speaking. 

“You shouldn’t be seeing patients if you’re sick.”

“I’m fine. I promise.”

The patient, who had calmed considerably under the effect of the haloperidol that had been injected into her bicep muscle, began to move again. 

“Roll her, she’s going to vo-” 

Kerry was cut off from finishing the sentence by her own coughs. Luckily, though, Susan and Abby had heard the retching and managed to roll her. 

“It’s probably a reaction to the Haldol,” Abby said as the young woman vomited onto the table. 

“Or maybe it’s the amount of alcohol in her system,” Haleh said as she walked in through the trauma room doors. “Blood alcohol is 0.12.”

“Either way, we need Compazine,” Susan spat. “Kerry, you need to go home.”

“I’m fine and Compazine is contraindicated with Haldol. And if there’s alcohol in her system-”

She opened her mouth to continue, but stopped. She managed to turn her head away in time for the sneeze, but had she not been able to, she was liable to sneeze into the gash on the patient’s leg. 

_ “ _ Abby, forget the Compazine. Just be ready to roll her if you need to,” Susan instructed. “And Kerry, you need to leave.  _ Now.”  _

“I’m fine, I promise-”

_ “Kerry Weaver, get out of my trauma room.” _

Though a common demand to be heard in the County General emergency department, none of those in earshot, including that to whom the demand was directed, had never heard it come from Susan Lewis. 

Susan didn’t bother to look at Kerry, though she was sure if she did, she’d have seen the redhead staring at her in shock. The patient on the table in front of her needed her attention more and as Susan began to examine the wound, she could hear the soft clicking of Kerry’s crutch as she retreated. 

Once the Haldol had fully circulated, both Susan’s patient and the man on PCP with a chunk of wood in his chest were both sedated enough for the physicians to attend to their injuries. The patient on PCP was quickly taken up to Surgery at the same time Susan called in a med student to suture the young woman’s leg. 

As she stepped out of the trauma room, she found Kim Legaspi waiting outside the door. When Susan made eye contact with her, she smiled pleasantly and raised her eyebrows. 

“Did you page Psych?”

“Trauma Two,” Susan answered before starting towards the Admit Desk. When she reached it, she barely glanced over before asking, “Randi, where’d she go?”

“Lounge,” the clerk replied. 

Susan turned sharply to her right and pushed the door open. 

Kerry was alone in the lounge, though it was not clear whether it just happened that way or if she had  _ made _ it happen. But regardless, she sat at the table, blowing her nose. 

Under any other circumstances, Susan’s immediate response would be remorse and sorrow at seeing the woman she loved (looking and) feeling so sick. But today, her frustration overpowered her sadness. 

“Why did you come in today, Kerry?” Susan asked, crossing her arms. “You had a fever of 101° F last night.”

“And when I checked it this morning, I didn’,” Kerry replied. “I’m okay.”

“No. You’re not.” Susan closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “Kerry, you almost coughed into a patient’s open wound.”

“But I didn’t-”

“No, you didn’t. But you shouldn’t have even been  _ close _ to.” Susan shook her head. “You need to go home. I’m going to have Carter take you home.”

There was a distinct finality in Susan’s tone, but Kerry wasn’t about to accept it. 

“Fine, fine, fine,” she said, raising her hands defensively. “I won’t see any patients. I’ll just work on chart review and some administrative stuff.”

“No, Kerry. You shouldn’t be working,  _ period _ . You need to go home and take care of yourself.”

“I can still do-”

_ “Why can you never just do what I ask?” _

Kerry looked as stunned at this as she did when Susan had demanded she leave the trauma room. But this time, Susan looked equally surprised. 

“You need to go home and get better,” Susan said slowly in a much lower voice. 

“Susan, I-” Kerry paused to clear her throat (for all the good it did). “Susan, I don’t want to do this, but I am your boss. You can’t tell me what to do.”

Susan let out a sardonic laugh. 

“ _ No.  _ No. You’re not my boss right now. You’re not my boss and you’re not the Chief of Emergency Services right now. You know why? Because the Chief of Emergency Services is  _ smart _ and does not make stupid decision that put her health and the health of her patients and colleagues at risk, which is exactly what you’re doing by insisting on staying here.”

Susan shook her head again, raising fingers to her temples. 

“You need to go home and take care of yourself. Carter is going to take you home. And that’s final.”

Susan inhaled deeply before turning towards the door. She had been intentionally avoiding looking at Kerry (lest she lose it), but when she heard the chair squeak, her head snapped around. 

“And don’t you  _ dare  _ try to get up.”

And with that, Susan yanked the lounge door open and stepped into the hallway. 

Those around either averted their eyes as she passed or exchanged glances with each other. All except for Kim, who let Susan take a few steps down the hallway before catching up with her. 

“Hery, Susan,” she said in a voice as equally pleasant as her earlier smile. “You have a sec?”

“Not really,” Susan said in an exasperated tone. (Yet another thing stolen from her wife.) “Did you see my patient?”

“Can’t talk to her ‘til she wakes up,” Kim replied with a small shrug. “So, I was thinking maybe you and I could talk.”

“Why?”

Kim sighed and gently laid a hand on Susan’s arm to move her to the side of the hallway. 

“I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation with Dr. Weaver. Honestly, none of us could help but overhear,” she said in a low voice, nodding towards the lounge. “And I take it that’s not your normal form of communication, yeah?”

“What are you getting at, Kim?”

“I heard about Dr. Greene and the diagnosis,” Kim said with a grimace. “And everyone says that the two of you are really good friends. And I’d hate for the stress over  _ that _ to affect your relationship with Dr. Weaver.”

“Thanks, Kim, but this is not about Mark,” Susan said quickly. “It’s about Kerry.”

“I understand it might feel that way, but in times of high emotional stress, it’s not unheard of for emotions to come out at the wrong time. Feeling mad about one thing and then you take it out on someone else-”

“I don’t need you to psycho-analyze me, Kim. This is about Kerry. It’s not about Mark.”

Suzie slipped off her shoes and dropped her backpack onto the floor.

“But I don’t understand why Momma couldn’t come pick me up.”

“I told you. Momma is sick.”

“Is Momma sick or does Momma just not feel good?”

“She is  _ sick _ ,” Susan said firmly. “I sent her home from work today. That’s how sick she is.”

Susan hung their coats up on the hooks near the door and tried to relax her shoulders. Then, she looked down at Suzie, whose pout had not let up since they’d gotten into the car twenty minutes ago.

“Now, I need to go upstairs to talk to Momma.”

“Is Momma in trouble?” 

“No,” Susan replied, shaking her head. “Well, honestly that depends on what I find Momma doing.”

Susan sighed and started for the stairs. But when Suzie made to follow her, she stopped.

“You need to stay down here,” Susan instructed, holding up a hand.

“But I want to go to my room,” Suzie whined. 

“Not right now. Stay down here and play, please.”

“Am  _ I  _ in trouble?” 

“No one is in trouble,” Susan stated, her patience wearing thin. “I just need you to stay down here and play for a while while I go talk to Momma.”

Susan waited to make sure Suzie wasn’t going to follow her before starting up the stairs again. But as she did, she heard a small but clear voice say, “So, you can go  _ yell  _ at Momma.”

_ “Susan Marie,” _ Susan hissed. “Cut it out.”

Suzie dropped onto the floor, but did not offer any additional protest, nor did she try and follow Susan upstairs. 

When Susan reached the upstairs hallway, she passed the door to the master bedroom to check that Lauren had not yet dropped Charlie off. It was still a little early, but she needed to confirm Charlie wasn’t napping in the crib before she returned to the master bedroom.

Kerry was sitting up in bed with the blanket pulled up over her legs. The TV on the dresser opposite the bed was on and tuned to NBC 5 Chicago, though Kerry had been mostly ignoring it in favor of the copy of a Janet Evanovich novel on her lap.

She had changed into a t-shirt and pajama pants and had adorned her blue-and-green robe. Though it was the same robe she wore each winter, whenever she wore it, Susan was always reminded of the first time Kerry had gotten sick on the night that would become their anniversary. (She then always thought about her gut feeling that it had once belonged to a man, which Kerry later confirmed had been true, as her ex-husband got tired of coming home to find her sleeping in it and decided it was hers and that he’d just buy himself a new one.)

Susan closed the door behind her and leaned back against it. She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths, all the while aware of Kerry watching her silently. 

“Okay. I feel like I owe you an apology for earlier, so I’m sorry for snapping at you,” Susan said slowly, opening her eyes. “But I’m still really frustrated with you, because as I was thinking about it today, I realized we have this conversation every time you get sick. And I don’t want to have this conversation with you every time you get sick. And not just because it feels like you’re exempt from the rule.

“Because if anyone else  _ dared _ to come into work as sick as you were today, you would have sent them home without question. You’d have made them go home in a  _ heartbeat _ and not return into they were well enough to take care of patients. And yet when  _ you _ get sick, suddenly, the rule doesn’t apply anymore.

“It’s like you can take care of everyone except you. And that.... That doesn’t make me mad, Kerry, it just makes me  _ sad _ . Because why does everyone else get to get taken care of but you don’t? Why are they all worthy of being cared for but you’re  _ not?” _

As she spoke, Susan felt the lingering anger in her chest give way to her underlying heartache. Tears began to prick at the corners of her eyes as she stepped forward into the bedroom. 

“When you don’t- When you don’t stay home and take care of yourself, I get scared because if you don’t take care of yourself, if you don’t go see a doctor and make sure you get better, it could get  _ worse _ . It could get worse or it could  _ be _ worse and-and-and the next thing you know what you thought was a concussion is actually  _ cancer _ and...”

Susan did not realize how close she was to the wall until she was sliding down it. 

She crumpled onto the ground as great, racking sobs overtook her. Her hair fell around her head like a curtain , shutting out the light of the bedroom as she buried her head in her arms and cried. 

She couldn’t be sure how long she sat there weeping before she felt a hand sweep hair back from her face. Then, two strong, calloused-but-yet-still-soft hands gently wrapped around her arms and pulled her up and onto the bed. 

Susan let herself be pulled forward and into Kerry’s arms, settling her head in Kerry’s neck. As she forced herself to take deep breaths, she could hear the soft wheezes in Kerry’s breathing. 

Having grounded herself in Kerry’s embrace, Susan sat up, only to feel Kerry inhale before turning her head away to cough.

She coughed several times before picking up the glass of water on her bedside table. She drank it down, but continued to cough, so Susan took it from her and filled it in the bathroom sink. 

“Thank you,” Kerry muttered in between breaths. 

Susan nodded and as Kerry’s coughing subsided, she took her turn to pull Kerry into her arms.

“I can’t lose you,” Susan said in a voice barely more than a whisper. “And I can’t lose him, but if I’m going to lose him, I really can’t lose you. 

“And when you don’t take care of yourself when you’re sick, it always makes me feel like you don’t care about yourself. I love you so much and I  _ care _ about you so much that I feel very, very sad when I think about that.”

“It’s not…” Kerry paused, taking a preemptive sip of water as she felt her throat tickle again. “It’s not that I don’t care about myself, Susan. It’s just…”

“Just what?”

Kerry took a deep breath. 

“I just… I will never stop feeling like I need to prove that I’m supposed to be there,” Kerry said quietly. “And I always feel like I have to prove it physically, because if I don’t, people will.. They’ll assume I  _ can’t _ .”

Susan could feel the warmth of tears on her bare arms as she squeezed Kerry tighter.

“Kerry, the only thing people assume you can’t do is follow directions,” Susan said with her own watery laugh. 

But where Susan let out a small chuckle, Kerry did not.

“No,” she said, shaking her head against Susan’s shoulder. “They… They assume I can’t do things or that I need to be taken care of. And I  _ don’t.  _ I don’t  _ want _ to be taken care of and I don’t  _ need  _ to be taken care of,

“Who assumes that? Because I promise, no one who knows you thinks-”

“It’s not the people who know me,” Kerry said, cutting her off. “You all… You all see me as I want you to see me - as I  _ am. _ But… But other people don’t.”

Kerry paused like she was going to cough again, but instead she lifted her arm to sneeze into her elbow. Susan pulled a tissue out of the box next to her and handed them to her. 

“Well, what about me, then?” Susan asked after Kerry blew her nose. “What about me? I understand if-if you don’t want anyone else to take care of you, but can  _ I?” _

Though part of her knew that she was going to continue to do so regardless of how Kerry answered, there was still a fair amount of desperate pleading in Susan’s voice. 

Kerry looked up at her, and in her eyes, Susan could see the same kind of indecision.

“Yes,” she breathed. “I-I…  _ Yes, _ you can take care of me, but… But I also don’t want you to take care of me.”

“But  _ why not? _ ”

“Because…” Kerry swallowed hard. “Because I don’t want you to have to. And-and-and I don’t want you to get tired of taking care of me.I… I don’t want you to leave me.”

Susan’s own tears threatened to overflow once more. She fought them back, biting her lip even beyond when she could taste blood. All the while, she just kept squeezing Kerry tighter to her, as if maybe  _ she _ was the one that was feared to leave.

This went beyond just the common cold. The fear that Kerry had expressed wound itself deeper,  _ much _ deeper. 

It wound itself into the worry of weather and whether the forthcoming rain or snow would bring additional soreness and inflammation. It wound itself into the quiet warnings to Suzie, directly or indirectly, about Momma not feeling well enough to go out/play/get out of bed today. And it wound itself most into the days when Susan had to parent alone as her partner was unable to perform her own activities of daily living, let alone assist in doing them for young children. 

In emergency departments and across many caring professions, the constant and everyday exposure to onslaughts of hurt and vulnerable people meant (and still means to this day) the ever present danger of compassion fatigue. And while compassion fatigue is best combated by self-care, there was nevertheless doubt in the method when the professional begins to meld with the personal.

“I’m not going to leave you,” Susan whispered. “And I’m not going to stop wanting to take care of you.”

“You say that now, but you don’t know how you’re going to feel in five years or ten years or forty years.”

The fact that Kerry imagined a future where they were together for forty years managed to combat the weight of her expressed doubt in Susan’s prolonged care. 

“You’re right. I don’t know how I will feel in forty years. But I know that as long as I love you, I am always going to want to take care of you,” she said, rubbing her hand along Kerry’s arm. “I can promise you that. Without hesitation.”

For a moment, it seemed Kerry was going to continue to argue with her, but no further argument came. 

Kerry just breathed in and out slowly, allowing Susan to wrap her so close that she was almost expecting to be scooped onto her lap. 

Susan’s unfortunate expertise in medicine made for painful thoughts and even nightmares, where the patients she had helped save (or failed to save) were replaced by those she loved. But even as she sat there thinking about Kerry and about Mark, and then about Suzie and Charlie, there was something to be said for the quiet moments of connection too.

For the memories and thoughts of times like these where she could feel Kerry’s weight pressed against her, the warm wetness of their shared tears, and the trust between them charging the air around them like electricity were stronger than that unfortunate expertise. And as long as she had these moments to think about, she would be okay. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Tuesday, everyone!
> 
> I'd like to thank lha for the prompt, as well as the-company-kept for another prompt that informed this one as well. The prompts were Kerry dealing with being sick as well as a prompt about Kerry being in bed all day for the first time. I couldn't pinpoint what episode Kerry was trying to work through the flu in and I couldn't really pinpoint myself where that first day in bed would be in context of the AU, but both ideas helped create this one.
> 
> As I said at the end of the last chapter, I talk all my dialogue out loud. And while planning this one, I was speaking aloud the conversation between Kerry and Susan in the lounge. The phrase, "Why can't you ever do what I ask?" came out almost like a reaction. It spun the chapter in a different direction than I expected, but I liked it. It made sense in a Season 7 context and explores a different side of their interactions than much of the rest of these chapters or the AU. 
> 
> Going in this direction meant digging deeper into the approaches to this one conversation. Susan would view it as Kerry not taking care of herself and Kerry would view it as being allowed to make her own decisions in her care (or lack thereof). I will say, it was much more difficult to have both their views expressed while not favoring one or the other (or sound too sappy/tropy/ blegh about them). I always hope that I do the characters justice in both their actions and their words. If I am not, I ask that you let me know. 
> 
> The next one will be on the light-hearted side. I haven't decided which one will come after that, as there are two in mind. One is lighter and one is not. We'll see where we end up there. 
> 
> It's time for bed. Have a good night, everyone. Until next time.


	17. They Live In You

“So, you  _ never _ wore snowshoes? Not even during the winter?” Susan asked as she lifted Suzie out of the stroller and into a high chair pulled up to the end of their table. 

“Television has lied to you, Susan,” Kerry said, chuckling as she slid into the booth. 

“So, if you didn’t wear snowshoes, what  _ did _ you wear when it snowed?”

“Snow boots. Same as you,” Kerry replied as Susan took a seat in the booth opposite her. “Big, ugly, clunky snow boots that I absolutely hated. They were too big on me, so I had to wear two pairs of socks to make sure they didn’t slide off .”

“Back in your day when you had to hike to school uphill both ways?”

Kerry rolled her eyes and picked up one of the menus on the table in front of them.

She, Susan, and Suzie had left Chicago the previous day around noon to make the six and a half hour journey northwest towards Minneapolis. It would have been shorter (and required less stops to let Suzie out of the car seat to run around) had they flown, but Susan put her foot down. 

They had only gotten to drive around a little bit before Suzie needed to go to bed, so they’d chosen to wake up early this morning to do a little sightseeing before Suzie’s afternoon nap. The tickets to the pre-Broadway tryout of  _ The Lion King _ that Susan had promised Kerry for Christmas were waiting at Will Call for the Saturday evening showing. Suzie was going with them, but neither adult expected her to stay awake long enough to get through the first act.

“What’s good here?” Susan asked as she too looked at the menu for the pizza shop Kerry had requested they have lunch at. “Has the menu changed much since you were last here?”

“Only the prices,” Kerry said as she too perused the options. “Now that I think about it, I think I only ever had their pepperoni pizza. I was never too adventurous with my pizza toppings.”

“Ultimate Veggie with mushrooms and sardines it is,” Susan muttered, closing the menu and looking up at Kerry with a mischievous smirk.

Kerry rolled her eyes again (as Susan had expected) and took a moment to glance around the shop. 

Nothing appeared to have changed since she had last visited. Not even the man wiping the cups behind the counter appeared different.

“What?” Susan asked as Kerry stifled a chuckle. 

“Oh, nothing. That’s just the same guy who worked here when I was in high school” she said, waving Susan away. Then, she dropped her voice. “It makes me wonder if he still sells weed.”

Susan’s mouth fell open in impressed shock.

“Are you telling me you, Kerry Weaver, bought  _ weed?  _ As in, you purchased an illegal substance?”

“No,” Kerry said, shaking her head. “I had a  _ friend _ who bought weed. I just happened to be sitting in front of him while he did it.”

Susan narrowed her eyes, as if questioning the existence of this “friend.” Then, she smiled. 

“My weed dealer was one of Chloe’s exes,” she explained in a low voice. “They were on-again/off-again all throughout high school. And when they were on, he gave it to me for half price, but if they were  _ off _ , I had to pay double.”

She paused, reminiscing for a moment.

“Of all Chloe’s exes, I think I liked him best,” she thought aloud. “And it really wasn’t because of that, I just genuinely thought he was a nice guy.”

They chuckled over this for a moment before the man in flannel came to take their orders. As he left, Susan reached into the diaper bag to pull out a bag of animal crackers for Suzie. 

The waiter came to take their orders at the same time that she poured a few out onto the table in front of the two-year-old. The bell on the door tinkled and Kerry’s attention was pulled to it, just as it had been each time the bell had tinkled since they arrived. 

“Why do you keep looking at the door?”

“I just…” Kerry shrugged. “I just keep thinking someone I know is going to walk in.”

Susan nodded slowly in understanding. She thought about one of Kerry’s “homework assignments” during counseling which was to let Susan ask her three personal questions each day. 

It was meant to make Kerry more comfortable about talking about herself with Susan while also connecting them deeper by talking about personal things. Kerry, not one to slack on homework, took the assignment seriously and allowed Susan to ask her questions with minimal resistance to answering them. But even a month after the counseling had ended, it was still difficult to get Kerry to bring the answers up without needing to be asked. (Which made Susan wonder if she ever would.)

“Who would be the worst person to walk in?” Susan asked curiously. “Like, if you could think of one person who you would just  _ hate _ to see, who would it be?”

Kerry’s brow rose, not in question, but as she thought of an answer. 

“How much time do we have? Because I’ve got a list.”

“A  _ list?” _ Susan exhaled deeply. “Okay, how about the best person? Who would that be?”

“His name is Michael and he won’t walk in because he lives in Colorado,” Kerry answered without hesitation.

To her surprise, Susan frowned. 

She scooted over to the edge of the booth and pulled her purse out from underneath the stroller. She dug around in it for a moment before pulling out several Polaroid photographs, which she shuffled through before pulling one from the pile and holding it up to Kerry. 

“Is this Michael?”

“Where did you find this?” Kerry said, taking the photo from her. 

It was of two teenagers, one a tall boy and the other a far shorter girl. Only the red of her long hair was clear as the rest of the color in the photo had turned sepia with age. 

“I didn’t go looking for it, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Susan stated, laying the other photos on the table. “A bunch of them fell out of the back of a photo album Suzie knocked off the shelf. And I figured you’d be telling stories when we got here, so I wanted a visual reference for who you were talking about.”

Kerry set the photo of her and Michael on the table and picked up one of the others on the table.

“If you have a problem with me looking at them, I’ll put them away,” Susan offered. “Though Suzie wanted to look at them, so I’ve already looked through them all. To make sure they were okay.”

“What did you expect to find that wasn’t?”

“I don’t know. You’re a very private person,” Susan said with a shrug. “For all I knew, the rumors that began back when you first started at County you had some secret double life were true.”

Kerry glanced up from the photos to raise an eyebrow at Susan.

“And what sort of double life did you all think I was leading?”

“Well, answers varied, but personally? Dominatrix,” Susan informed her. “You certainly had the temperment for it.”

Kerry, who had taken a sip of her iced tea, inhaled too fast at the remark, causing her to splutter and cough for several seconds. 

“No such luck,” she said in between coughs. 

“Really? Well, now I’m disappointed.”

Kerry eyed Susan suspiciously for a moment, trying to figure out how serious she was about this disappointment, before rolling her eyes when Susan winked. 

She looked back down at the photographs and picked up a candid shot of her and her mother sitting on a bench together, looking out over a lake. The back of the picture was labeled  _ My lovely ladies, Ft. Snelling State Park, August 1975 _

“Personally, I think this one is my favorite,” Susan remarked, sliding a Polaroid across the table to Kerry.

Kerry blinked out of the memory of her and her sitting on the bench together to look at the picture Susan had pointed out. She glanced at it for a moment, before raising a hand to her forehead. 

“Oh my God.”

At Kerry’s reaction (and the red rising in her cheeks), Susan grinned. 

This photo was one of the oldest ones, given that there was no color to it, faded or otherwise. It was taken in front of a school and featured a very young Kerry standing in front of her parents, grinning broadly and showing off the gap where her two front teeth had been. 

“I can’t believe you brought this,” Kerry said, shaking her head and picking up the picture.

“How could I not? You look so  _ cute _ . With your teeth missing and your little headband,” Susan said with a happy shrug. “How old were you?”

“About six?” Kerry said, narrowing her eyes at the picture. “Yeah, I’d say six. Because I outgrew those crutches around my seventh birthday and then decided I only wanted to use one.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“Well, I didn’t think I needed the support of two.” Kerry handed the picture back to Susan. “Unless I was racing my friends.”

“Let me guess...” Susan said slowly. “Was that because you wanted to win?”

“Perhaps.”

Susan rolled her eyes playfully before looking at the picture again. 

“You know, the more I get to know you, the less scary you get. Because, I’m just thinking that if we were at work and you started yelling at me, I would just think of this-” Susan held up the photo again. “-With you being all cute and your two front teeth missing, and then your yelling wouldn’t work anymore.”

“Why do you think I don’t want people to get to know me,” Kerry said, taking another sip of her tea. “If you learn too much, I lose my edge.”

Susan chuckled, but still acknowledged the comment with a shrug. 

“And I’ll say that, to repay you for letting me look at these, when we get back to Chicago, I will show you the pictures of me in my grunge phase.”

“Your grunge phase?” Kerry repeated in disbelief. “ _ You _ had a  _ grunge phase?” _

“Yeah. There was a lot of flannel involved,” Susan said with a sigh. “It lasted all through college and into my first year of med school. I’ve never even shown them to Mark because I know I will never live it down if I do.”

Kerry grinned in a way that suggested Susan would never live it down to Kerry either. But she just offered a, “I’m going to hold you to that,” before looking through the other pictures. 

“It’s been a very long time since I looked through these,” she said thoughtfully, picking up a picture of herself in junior high. “It makes me realize how upset my thirteen-year-old self would be with me for cutting my hair off.”

She held the picture up to Susan, who took it. The younger woman glanced between the woman in front of her and her newly pixie-cut coif and the photograph of a young teenager whose hair appeared to be just past her waist. 

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“Was this the longest it's ever been?” Susan asked, handing the photo back. 

“Yes. It was the 70s, so long hair was the style, and I was  _ all  _ over it. I was so upset when I had to cut it.”

“Did your parents not approve?” Susan wondered aloud before glancing at a photo on the table in front of her of a cheerful-looking bald man and a tall, curly-haired woman with an imposing but kind presence. 

“No, they didn’t mind. I just… That winter, I started running into a  _ problem _ when I would go to, um, slide my crutch to my arm, when I wore long-sleeves, I couldn’t tell when I caught hair in the cuff… Until I’d got to walk and would yank my head forward.”

Susan’s hand flew to her mouth to try and prevent the laughter that aroused from the mental picture Kerry had just painted. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t laugh, but that’s really funny.”

But to her surprise (and relief), Kerry chuckled too.

“You can laugh. It is funny.  _ Now _ , at least. It wasn’t funny then, because it  _ hurt. _ ”

“How many times did you do it?”

“Well…” Kerry said slowly, lengthening the word as she thought/wondered what would be a reasonable lie). “It happened a couple times and I just, you know, pretended it wasn’t a problem/ But then I did it three times in one day. And that night, I was complaining about it at dinner, and my mother just said, ‘Well dear, you can either get rid of the hair down to your waist or your crutch, and you are not allowed to get rid of your crutch.’”

“Hmmm.”

“Yeah, my mother was nothing if not pragmatic,” Kerry remarked. “Very loving. I never doubted that or her love for my dad, but she was a very rip-the-BandAid-off sort of person.”

Susan nodded. 

“That makes a lot of sense,” she commented (though it was not without a bit of pointedness). “What about your dad? Was he also a rip-the-BandAid-off kind of person?”

“Oh, no. If there was BandAid ripping to be done, he always deferred to my mother,” Kerry explained. “No, you went to my dad if you needed calm and gentle negotiation. You went to my mom if you needed to be persuaded. They balanced each other out well.

“I can remember a lot of times when they’d have to call a utility company or work things out for church stuff… And my dad would always  _ start _ the conversation, but it wasn’t going in the right direction, my mother would finish it.”

“Again, that makes a lot of sense.”

Kerry traced a finger around the edge of the photograph in front of her. 

All three Weavers pictured in it were smiling, which was seldom found in photographs taken after they’d moved back to the States. And given the graduation gown Kerry was wearing, there was no reason to wonder about the source of their joy. 

“How did they die?”

Kerry continued to stare at the photograph for a long moment. 

“My dad was first. They… They called it natural causes, but now I think it was a heart attack. But whatever it was, it was quick. Painless. He…” Kerry swallowed hard. “He kissed my mother goodnight and didn’t wake up the next day.”

“And your mom?”

Kerry exhaled deeply. 

“She didn’t last a year after he died.” Kerry shook her head. “She had a stroke. She’d had hypertension for years, but hated going to the doctor. Even though our doctor was one of our family friends. She just… She was scared of it. And after he died, I think she stopped taking her medicine.

“And, though I know that you can’t  _ actually _ die of a broken heart… I truly think she did. Because they'd been together for forty years and… and I don’t think she wanted to live without him.”

Kerry inhaled deeply, blinking back tears as she felt a gentle hand take hers. It only lingered for a moment, fearing the potential consequences of others taking notice, but the brief touch was nonetheless welcome.

“You said you haven’t been back in ten years,” Susan said in a very low voice. She was looking at Kerry with a great deal of concern in her eyes. “Why haven’t you… Aren’t they here? Don’t you want to visit them?”

Kerry nodded. 

“They’re here. Just up the road. But…This is going to sound bad - and my mother is probably going to haunt my dreams for this - but…” Kerry took a deep breath. “It’s just their bodies. It’s not  _ them _ . And while I think they’d want me to honor them by visiting, there’s so many other things I could do to honor them that are better than crying next to a rock with their names on it.

“Caring about people. Taking care of people. Being happy… I think as long as I’m doing those things, they would be pleased.” Kerry let out a watery chuckle. “Although, I think my dad would be disappointed that I sold his train set.”

“His train set?” Susan asked with her own watery chuckle.

“I never told you about that?” Kerry asked, wiping away a stray tear with the back of her hand. When Susan shook her head, she said, “Yeah. My dad had this huge train set in the garage. He’d spends hours in the garage working on it. Recreating a bunch of his favorite landmarks and buildings. After he died, I sold most of it to a children’s museum.”

“Train?” Suzie perked up and then excitedly looked around in expectation of Thomas the Tank Engine appearing to take her off to the island of Sodor. “Where train?”

Susan noticed this and chuckled before rubbing the toddler’s back as the young girl’s excitement faded into disappointment. 

“Sorry, honey. There are no trains. Kerry sold the trains,” Susan explained before looking back to Kerry. “But maybe she could get you some more.”

Before Kerry had a chance to negate the suggestion (which made Suzie  _ very _ happy indeed), the waiter returned to their table, their pizza in hand. His appearance forced them to quickly shuffle the photographs back into a pile, which Susan stowed away back in her purse. 

Once the man had set the pizza, plates, and napkins down in front of them, he straightened up and pointed at Kerry. 

“Wait, I remember you,” he said , his eyes growing wide. “You owe me five bucks.”

“Do I?” Kerry asked, his brow furrowing. 

“Yeah. You threatened to impale me on your crutch if I didn’t give Levin the sale for five dollars. It was supposed to be ten. You owe me the difference.”

Susan looked from the man to Kerry and back, thoroughly entertained. 

“Fine. I’ll add it to the tip,” Kerry said, looking at the man over the rim of her glasses. “But I’m not adjusting for inflation.”

After they had eaten and paid for their pizza (the extra five dollars in the tip as promised), they loaded Suzie into her stroller and started for the car. But right as Susan pulled out the keys, Kerry nodded her to follow. 

It quickly became apparent to Susan why Kerry had wanted to walk this way (even though they were quickly approaching Suzie’s nap time) as nearly each house they passed had a specific story Kerry wanted to share. And as they reached a yellow house sitting on a lot where the road curved, the realization clicked. 

“Hang on,” Susan said, pointing at the house and then looking at Kerry. “This is the same house as that little one on your dresser.”

“Yeah. This was the house I grew up in. The one on my dresser is the recreation that my dad made for his train table.”

“Wow,” Susan said, looking back to the house. “When you said he recreated buildings, I thought you meant that they  _ resembled _ other buildings. I didn’t realize they were exact replicas.”

“Well, of course,” Kerry said with a shrug. “My dad was a Weaver. We don’t half-ass things.”

They both chuckled and readied themselves to return down the street when a woman’s voice called out, “Kerry?”

Kerry immediately turned, looking around for the source of the voice, when she spotted an elderly couple coming down the sidewalk. They were waving at her, their expressions full of surprised joy at the sight of her.

She had barely been able to process the recognition of them (let alone explain who they were to Susan) before they’d reached her and pulled her into a hug. 

“You didn’t tell us you were coming into town,” the woman exclaimed, before pulling away and holding her at arm’s length. “And Michael didn’t say anything when he called last.”

“I, uh… I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to call or not,” Kerry said in a low voice. “After Michael and I-”

“Oh, please,” the woman said, waving her away. “You were our family long before you and Michael got together and you’re our family long after too.”

Kerry gave them a small smile before remembering Susan was standing nearby. 

“Susan, this is Martha and Michael Levin... Senior,” she introduced. “Mr. and Mrs. Levin, this is my…  _ friend  _ Susan and her daughter Suzie. Susan works with me in the emergency department at County General.”

“Ah, yes. Michael did tell us that you were leaving Mt. Sinai.”

“It’s nice to meet you both,” Susan greeted as she offered a hand to Martha to shake.

“And very nice to meet you too,” Martha said with a smile. Then, she laid a hand on Kerry’s arm. “And Kerry, dear, you’re an adult. You don’t need to call us that.”

Kerry chuckled with the rest of them, but that didn’t change her mother’s voice in her head lecturing her about manners. 

“So, what’s the occasion?” Michael Sr. asked. “Just back for a visit?”

“Actually, it’s a belated Christmas gift,” Susan explained. “We have tickets to  _ The Lion King _ .”

“Ooooh. I’ve heard that’s very good,” Martha said encouragingly.

“That’s good to hear. We’ve watched the movie a million times, thanks to someone,” Susan said, pointing down at the stroller. “So, when I heard they were making a musical of it and that they were previewing it here in Minneapolis, I had to get us tickets.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“Yeah,” Susan said with a smile at Kerry. “It is.”

Then, she looked back at the Levins.

“Suzie’s biologically my niece and I adopted her last spring. And the way it worked out, the circumstances under which I got her were really… unexpected. And more than a little overwhelming. But, when I finally got custody of her, Kerry really reached out to me and stepped up to help me with her. She helps babysit and arranges work schedules. She even invited me to move into her when I couldn’t afford the rent at my old place.” Susan let out a sigh. “It’s the least I could do to repay her.”

Kerry tried to fight off the faint blush that crept into her cheeks at Susan’s words, though it was growing stronger in the knowledge that Susan was also smiling at her. The Levins didn’t notice (or simply pretended not to), but did both look at Kerry with proud smiles on their faces.

“Not really surprising. It’s just like your parents.”

Kerry looked up at them, confusion settling on her features. 

“What?”

“Well, I know they never went as far as to invite a family that was adopting into their basement,” Michael said with a shrug. “But whenever we knew anyone who was thinking about adopting or needed advice, I always told them to call your parents. They’d give what advice they could and helped navigate new adoptive parents through the process as much as possible. Even if it just meant they sat there and listened to someone cry because an adoption fell through. They were always willing to help.”

“I… I didn’t know that.”

“I think they felt it was their duty,” Martha said thoughtfully. “Their way of giving back. Since their own adoption was so successful.”

These words seeded themselves in Kerry’s chest and remained there throughout the rest of the day and into the night. 

And later, as they sat in The Orpheum Theatre, watching actors manipulating big, beautiful puppets around the stage, painting a picture that reminded her of her childhood, the words of the music made those words take root. 

_ “Night… And the spirit of life, calling… Mamela.” _

She didn’t understand Zulu or Sotho as well as she did Swahili, but she knew the word “Mamela.”

It meant listen. 

_ “They live in you… They live in me… They’re watching over everything we see. In every creature, in every star…. In your reflection, they live in you.” _

She didn’t doubt that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, first things first: I need to see a musical. 
> 
> My fiance and I have an understanding that I must be fed a steady diet of musicals or else I will eventually start shredding the drapes. And we have tickets to see _Wicked_ in May (him for the first time, me for the [redacted]th time), but that's still a long time from now. And listening to the soundtrack of _The Lion King_ only served to 1) make me liable to cry in my office and 2) remember that it's been a long time since I've seen a musical. 
> 
> Anyways. Enough on that. Unless you'd like to discuss my _Wicked_ fanfiction, which is where I cut my teeth on writing fanfiction (and is therefore not nearly as good as what I can do now).
> 
> This prompt came from the-company-kept, who wanted to know what happened when Susan, Kerry, and Suzie went to Minneapolis thanks to Susan's Christmas present to Kerry. I had fun with this, which is probably why this one chapter in 4,011 words. But it's lighthearted, sad, and also supplies a lot more backstory. 
> 
> Back when I was actively writing [The Summer of '77](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20554961), I came to the realization that, while I never do self-insert OCs, I do tend to have parent-insert OCs. In other words, if the parents in a story are good, they are almost guaranteed to be a kind, gentle, and bald fathers and bold, assertive, loving mothers. I have told my own bold, assertive, and loving mother this, and she was quite proud that that is part of her legacy. 
> 
> I hope you have enjoyed this very long slice of life. I've officially decided to do twenty chapters, meaning there are two more prompts that will be answered before the finale. And I am very excited about the finale. 
> 
> Love to you all. Have a great weekend.
> 
> Until next time.


	18. Adoption: A Confession in Three Acts

**_Act One: 1999_ **

Susan kept staring at the ultrasound. 

It had  _ worked _ . The IVF had actually  _ worked _ . She was pregnant and the picture in front of her proved it. 

Back when she had first brought the idea of having another kid to Kerry, they thought about adoption. They both knew that there were thousands of children out there waiting for good homes and that they could provide a good one. But as they started to look into it, they began to worry that perhaps adoption was not the right move this time. 

Susan kept thinking of the fear she’d had while trying to get custody of Suzie. Every day, she woke up in a cold sweat that Chloe would return and snatch her away. Kerry didn’t exactly help with this, as when Susan expressed her fears, Kerry told her that her own parents had lost three adoptions and had given up hope of having children for twenty-five years before they tried one last time. 

So, they thought it over and decided that, if they were serious about having another kid, that they would  _ have _ another kid.

Suzie was very excited about the whole ordeal and spent most of her time chattering away about what she was going to do with a new brother or sister. Her mothers both found this very funny, though it did occur to Susan that Suzie had yet to bring up a question she was sure the four-year-old had wondered about.

“Mommy, where do babies come from?”

Susan looked up from the ultrasound to see Suzie standing in front of her, her head cocked to the side in question, and Kerry, who had just come out of the bedroom, immediately turn and walk right back into the bedroom.

“Um, well…”

Suzie climbed up onto the couch next to Susan, who sat up to accommodate her. Once settled, the preschooler resumed her curious expression, which indicated to Susan that there was no way she was getting out of this one. 

Susan took a deep breath. 

“So, when two people, usually a mommy and a daddy, want to have a baby, they…  _ wish _ very hard. And, when they wish, sometimes, the mommy gets a baby in her belly.”

“So, I was a baby in your belly? Like the baby is in your belly now?” Suzie asked, leaning forward and put her hands on Susan’s stomach.

“Not… not quite.”

Suzie frowned and Susan pulled her onto her lap.

“Sometimes, people really want a baby, and they wish really hard for it, but… but even though they wish really hard, they still don’t get a baby,” Susan explained as she began to stroke Suzie’s back. “Sometimes these are mommies and daddies or they’re two mommies or two daddies. Or just one mommy or one daddy. And even though they wish just as hard, if not harder, they can’t have a baby. 

“And sometimes, the mommies and daddies who do have a baby realize that someone else might be able to take of the baby better than they could. So, they give that baby up for adoption, so one of those mommies or daddies that can’t have a baby by wishing can adopt that baby and take care of them.”

Suzie said nothing, but just watched her mother with sincere attention.

“A couple years ago, my sister, your Aunt Chloe, wished for a baby. And she got a baby in her belly and decided that she wanted that baby to be named after me. And the baby in her belly grew and grew until it was time for that baby to be born. But after that baby was born, she realized that she couldn’t take care of the baby, so she trusted that baby to the person she thought would take care of her better, which was me.

“And I had to wait and wait and wait, and prove to a lot of people, including myself, that I would be a good mommy to this baby. People had to come visit my house and watch me play and take care of the baby, all so that they could be sure that Aunt Chloe made the right choice.”

Susan hugged Suzie, relishing how Suzie buried her face in Susan’s neck. 

They remained there for a moment, mother and daughter cuddled together, before Suzie sat up.

“I have a question.”

“What?” Susan asked, brushing some of Suzie’s hair back away from her face.

“If two mommies or daddies want a baby but they can’t get it by wishing, how did you and Momma get a baby in your belly?”

Susan swore she could hear Kerry laugh from the bedroom, but ignored it in favor of thinking of an answer.

“Well, sometimes if two parents can’t get a baby by wishing, they use magic. Which is how we got the baby in Mommy’s belly,” Susan said slowly. “But magic costs a lot of money, so not everybody can use magic.”

**_Act Two: 2002_ **

Susan climbed into the driver’s seat and adjusted the rear view mirror, glancing at Suzie as she did so. 

“What’s wrong, honey?” Susan asked as she shifted the car into reverse and began to pull out of the elementary school parking lot. 

“Nothing.”

“Are you sure?” Susan said, shifting into drive and joining the queue of cars waiting to depart onto the street. “You look like something is wrong.”

Suzie stared out the window for a long moment before heaving a sigh. 

“Mommy, do I have a daddy?”

Susan chuckled as she inched the car forward, cutting eyes at a Jeep that threatened to take her place.

“Suzie, you have a Mommy and a Momma. What do you think?”

But Suzie didn’t laugh at the remark. Her little brow just furrowed deeper. 

“No, really. Do I have a daddy?”

Susan’s smile faltered. She glanced at the mirror again. 

“Why do you ask?”

“Because Jake in my class says that all babies have to have a mommy and a daddy in order to be born,” Suzie said, still looking out the window. “And you said that Aunt Chloe was the mommy whose belly I was in, but if babies need a mommy and a daddy to be born, do I have a daddy?”

Susan took a deep breath. 

“Yes. There was a daddy involved in helping Aunt Chloe get pregnant with you.”

“Who was it? Because you always say that Aunt Chloe was the one who decided that you should take care of me when she couldn’t, but if there was a daddy too, why didn’t he take care of me?”

Susan closed her eyes for a moment, considering her options and trying not to think of how much her heart hurt at the young girl’s words. 

“He and Aunt Chloe made the decision together. They both thought that I would be the best person to take care of you. I.... I just don’t talk about him as much.”

Suzie nodded, but continued to look out the window. When she spoke again, her high-pitched voice of a six-almost-seven-year-old was tinged with anger and hurt.

“Jake said that kids who were adopted were adopted because their mommies and daddies didn’t want them anymore.”

Susan looked at the rearview mirror, the pain in her heart flashing violently at the look of sadness on the girl’s face.

“That is not true,” Susan said firmly. “And that is a very not nice thing for him to say to you.”

Suzie looked away from the window and up towards the mirror. They made eye contact in the reflection and the girl could tell her mother’s sincerity through the look in her eyes. 

“Aunt Chloe wanted you very much,” Susan said in earnest. “She loved you very much. I promise you that, Suzie. I promise you.”

Suzie did not look as reassured as Susan would have hoped, but she did relax the tiniest bit.

“And if he ever says that to you again, I want you to go get a teacher. You hear me, Suzie?” Susan asked rhetorically (though Suzie did nod). “I want you to go tell a teacher, because that is not okay for him to say to you. And if he does it again, Momma is going to want to have a talk with his parents.”

Suzie frowned. 

“Don’t you mean  _ Mommy _ will want to have a talk with his parents?”

Susan gave a small shrug of acknowledgement. 

“Of course I’d want to talk to him too,” Susan admitted. “But in this case, I think I would want Momma to do it.”

“Because she’s scarier when she yells?” 

“Yes. Because she’s scarier when she yells.”

**_Act Three: 2013_ **

Susan stepped through the open door of Suzie’s bedroom and sighed. 

Most of her things were boxed up, save for the few things she’d need before they trekked northwest to Evanston. The walls were bare, her posters and photographs all packed away to be hung on the walls of her dorm room at Northwestern. 

At the sound of the footsteps, Suzie turned from the box she was packing to find her mother standing in the doorway, looking around wistfully. 

Suzie raised a warning finger. 

“No.  _ No.  _ You are not allowed to come in here and cry, _ ” _ she said curtly. “Momma’s already come by three times and even  _ Charlie _ came and hugged me for a long time. No more. No more crying. 

Susan raised her hands defensively before sliding her hands back into the pockets of her shorts and leaning against the doorframe.

“I am  _ excited _ . And all of you crying is ruining it,” Suzie said firmly. “This is supposed to be a happy occasion.”

“‘Let us not bicker and argue over who killed who.’”

Suzie looked up at Susan and frowned at the remark. Susan replied with a look of disbelief. 

“ _ Monty Python and the Holy Grail?” _ Susan shook her head. “Okay, maybe you can’t go to college after all. Because  _ clearly  _ I’ve neglected part of your upbringing.”

Suzie rolled her eyes and picked up the shirt she had been folding. 

“What did you come up here for?”

Susan sighed.

“I wanted to talk to you before you left. About safety. When you’re at college.”

Suzie’s eyes grew wide and she shook her head vigorously.

“There’s-there’s really no need. Trust me, Momma already gave me the talk and I swear, if I have sex, we will use a condom. I promise,” Suzie said quickly. “Please never make me sit through that again. And, when Charlie’s old enough,  _ you _ do it. Don’t let Momma do it?”

“She was that bad?” Susan asked, her brow furrowing as she stepped further into the room and took a seat on Suzie’s bed. 

“She wasn’t…  _ bad _ ,” Suzie said slowly. “She was… thorough. It… It honestly felt like a lecture. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she pulled out my health teacher’s slides on STDs and started teaching from them.”

“Well, she  _ does _ have that one PowerPoint on her laptop…” Susan thought aloud.

Suzie’s eyes grew even wider and her expression changed to one of disgust. 

“Ew. Ew. Oh my God. Ew.”

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” Susan said, waving her away. “It’s on  _ my _ laptop. Because  _ I’m  _ the one who works at a teaching hospital and had to give the M1s a lecture titled, ‘Recognizing Venereal Diseases in an ER setting.’

“And they’re all barely older than you. And I’ve gotta say, a 22-year-old first-year med student pointing at my slide and asking why a penis looks like that  _ really _ makes me wonder if this tenure thing was really worth it.”

Suzie waited for a moment, as if expecting there to be more to the story, before chuckling.

“While I’m glad Momma reviewed that with you, I wanted to talk to you about a different kind of safety.”

Susan sat down at the foot of Suzie’s bed and patted the space next to her. Suzie followed the instruction and took a seat, folding her legs criss-cross applesauce. 

Once she knew she had Suzie’s full attention, Susan took a deep breath. 

“I haven’t really felt the need to have this conversation with you before because you’ve never really been much of a party animal and you only have like four friends.”

“Um, Mommy, I have  _ seven  _ friends,” Suzie corrected, earning her a chuckle and a nod of acknowledgment from Susan. 

“Alright,  _ seven _ friends. Only four of whom I like.”

Suzie rolled her eyes. 

“But still, you and your seven friends always been pretty chill, so I haven’t really talked much about this. But you’re about to go to college, which means it’s a good time to revisit it…”

Suzie’s brow furrowed at the way her mother’s voice had grown serious and yet hesitant.

“Is this a ‘Don’t Do Drugs’ speech?”

“Not exactly. I mean,  _ yes. _ I’d prefer you not to do drugs. But you might want to try things when you go off to school and I just want to warn you that you are at a greater risk of getting hooked on them than your peers are because…” Susan heaved a sigh, but did not break eye contact with Suzie. “Because your Aunt Chloe was an addict.”

Suzie stared for a second before her brow furrowed again. 

“Really?” she asked after a long moment, honest curiosity in her voice. 

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“Her whole life it felt like,” Susan said with a shrug. “And… And when I was younger, even after I went to med school, I thought that… that she could stop if she just…  _ wanted _ to. That all it took was her trying and she could do it if she wanted it enough. But what I didn’t really get was that, she couldn’t stop. 

“Addiction is a brain disease. When you get addicted, while there is some willpower involved in quitting and trying to stay clean, it’s not that simple. I wouldn’t tell a diabetic patient just to  _ will _ their pancreas into working. And there are people who quit and don’t use for years,  _ decades _ even. But I’ve talked to some of them, and they all the same thing: It’s really fucking hard. 

“And with Chloe… I didn’t know how hard it was back then. How much of a grip it had. But I  _ should’ve _ . Because she couldn’t stay clean not just when bad things started happening, but she was in danger of losing good things too.”

Suzie was very quiet. Her arms were crossed and she appeared to be staring at a flower on the design of the comforter as she processed the new information. 

“And I don’t want to scare you off from having fun,” Susan said, laying a hand on Suzie’s leg. “But there is a strong genetic link to addiction. And I felt that you needed to know so you could be safe and understand that if you party at college, you’re at a greater risk of not being able to stop.”

Suzie nodded slowly, still staring at the blanket. Then, she looked up at Susan, her eyes narrowed. 

“When you say the good things that she lost, be honest with me: Was I one of them?”

Susan heaved another sigh and then nodded. Suzie responded by beginning to chew on her lip.

“She was clean while she was pregnant with you and for the first months after you were born,” Susan explained. “But… But it was just too strong. And one night, I picked you up and went to find her only to find out she’d relapsed. And then she just disappeared.”

Susan pulled her legs up onto the bed and crossed them, mirroring Suzie. She took her eldest daughter’s hands in hers. 

“I have always told you that Aunt Chloe trusted you to me and that has never been a lie,” Susan said with all the sincerity she could muster. “But it was also never that clean cut.”

“She just  _ left?” _ Suzie said, her tone full of both disbelief and hurt. 

“Yes. She did,” Susan confirmed, nodding. Then, she squeezed Suzie’s hands tighter. “But I don’t want you to think for a  _ second _ that it was because of you. It wasn’t. She loved you. She really, really did. But…”

Susan swallowed hard as that latent guilt and sorrow she always felt when thinking of Chloe began to grow in her chest. 

Suzie took another minute to process. She was now chewing so hard on her lip that she expected to taste the ferrous taste of blood any second. 

“Did she ever come back?’

“Yeah. She left the summer of ’95 and she came back the Halloween of ‘96,” Susan informed her. “But by then, you were already mine. I’d already adopted you. We’d already moved in with Momma. 

“And she wanted to see you. To be a part of life but… but I said no. Because I couldn’t trust her. Because addiction is a  _ motherfucker _ and it had made one out of my sister.” Susan felt tears begin to prick at her eyes. “And I know that that broke her heart. But it was more important to me that you were safe and cared for than how my sister felt.”

She shook her head and inhaled deeply. She rubbed calming circles over the back of Suzie’s hand with her thumb, hoping the concentric movements would ease the pain that she had brought on both of them.

“Is that how she died?” Suzie asked in her simple, curious voice. “You always said she was sick, but not like Uncle Mark. Was it the drugs? Was that what killed her?”

Tears were now streaming down both of their faces. Susan bit her lip and nodded once more.

“I gave her an ultimatum. I told her that she had to stay clean for five years before I’d let her be part of your life again...”

“And she couldn’t,” Suzie finished. 

That familiar icy guilt froze in Susan’s chest. But even frozen, she still felt a sob escape it. 

“I don’t know.”

Suzie looked up from where she had been staring at her lap to look at her mother. 

“What?”

“I don’t know,” Susan repeated shakily. “I never called her to find out. And it’s-it’s… It’s my biggest regret in life.”

“But I think… I think she did.”

“You said you never called her,” Suzie said, her voice now edged with a bit of anger Susan felt she deserved. “How would you know?”

“Because…” Susan took a shaky breath. “Because when you- when you use drugs… The first time you use and you get high, it takes a certain amount of the drug to make you feel that way. And that same amount might work the second or even third time, but eventually, it’s not enough, so you have to use more. And that’s called ‘tolerance’. You get tolerant to that amount of drug, so you need more to feel the same high.

“And when people stop using or get clean and stay that way for a while, their tolerance goes down. But if they decide to use again, they might not know that that tolerance went away. So they go to use the same amount that they used last and it’s too much and they overdose.”

“So you think she stayed clean and then overdosed because she hadn’t been using?” Suzie frowned. “But that’s not the only reason people can overdose, right? She could have just been using the whole time and then overdosed. Got a stronger batch or something. Like they say on the news.”

Susan closed her eyes for a moment. 

“She could’ve,” Susan admitted before opening her eyes and looking up. “But I think she stayed clean for that time because… Because even though five years would have been October… She died in May.”

Suzie stared at her, wide-eyed. 

Her offer that Chloe could have been using the whole time that she had raised in an effort to assuage some of her mother’s guilt, though still a possibility, was suddenly considered less of a possibility when faced with this particular fact. Because, though purer and therefore more lethal forms of heroin and fentanyl  _ had _ been making their way throughout urban and rural America since the nineties, that truth of that seemed null when faced with the truth that her biological mother had died the month of her birthday.

Susan imagined she could read Suzie’s thoughts. She imagined the pure, unfettered color with which her daughter’s thoughts of her were painted getting slowly invaded with the stark stains of this newfound information. 

“I never meant to keep this from you. I just knew that whenever I told you, you needed to be old enough to really understand,” Susan said, squeezing Suzie’s hands once more. “And I know this may change how you think about me a little bit-”

“No, it won’t,” Suzie said quickly, cutting her off. “I still love you a lot-”

“Not how you  _ feel _ about me, how you  _ think  _ about me,” Susan said, shaking her head. “You’re not ‘Little Suzie’ anymore.You’re an adult now and that means you’ve gotta know that I’m not perfect. I’ve made a lot of mistakes and this is one of them.”

Susan took one of Suzie’s hands in both of hers and lifted it to her lips. She kissed it and held it there for a long moment before releasing it. 

“I didn’t always get along with Aunt Chloe, and not in the way that you and Charlie sometimes don’t get along. We disagreed a lot and I sometimes… I sometimes held things against her. I could be bitter about how things went and how I felt sometimes like I had to clean up her messes all the time.

“But no matter how much we disagreed, Suzie, there was one thing that never disagreed about, and that was how much we loved you and how much better you made our lives.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, y'all.
> 
> I'd like to thank the-company-kept for this prompt as well. The prompt was Susan telling Suzie that she was adopted. I came up first with Act One, but Acts Two and Three soon followed. And, while I'm usually one that is very happy to have the fun fluffy part and the sad angsty parts together, this was a prompt I truly didn't expect to do that with. But once the idea was in my head for the conversation about Chloe, I couldn't shake it off. And to write the chapter without it would have haunted me. 
> 
> I was cleaning and found a notebook that I scribbled a few one-shots in during my flight to California back in October 2019. I got distracted and forgot about it because my trip was to visit one of my best friends AND it was during that trip that I realized I could tweak a few things on a novel I started writing several years ago that led to me starting work on my original novel. But one of the one-shots in it was one I really liked so I'm going to do _twenty-one_ chapters instead of just twenty. (But I'm still not going to put the chapter count up yet so I don't have to change it later in case I change my mind... which could happen.)
> 
> I hope you guys are all well. I was sick this weekend and stayed home and now I'm bored out of my mind. But I'm feeling good again... just in time to go back to work tomorrow. 
> 
> Have a good rest of your day/night! Until next time.


	19. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place immediately after [Chapter 19](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18901180/chapters/46707901) of "Unexpected Circumstances"

Sometimes, Susan hated being good at what she did and it wasn’t for any reason especially related to patient care either. 

Sure, occasionally, it sucked that she was adept at spotting tumors on an x-ray or could easily diagnose a terrible illness, but that was hard mostly because of the human element of it. These weren’t just facts or figures or diagnoses, but people. And the news she gave wouldn’t affect just them, but all the people’s people too.

No, what was by far the worst was the nightmares.

Early on in her training and at the beginning of her career, she had nightmares full of flashes and gore. But as she grew in her knowledge and the love she had for others, her nightmares began to change. 

They were no longer purely recreations of the tragedy she saw everyday, but reimagined scenarios where those tragedies were happening to the people she loved. And, while in general these awful occurrences were few and far between, in those rare and horrible times when her nightmares met her reality, bad dreams were practically a guarantee. 

Perhaps that was why she was so hesitant to let herself fall asleep tonight.

The cannula she had forced Kerry to put back on after the bath made her snores oddly muffled, but at least she was sleeping. Susan had heard from many postictal patients that seizures left one feeling incredibly tired.

Susan rubbed a hand gently across Kerr’s back. The slow rhythm of the comforting comforted Susan too, lulling her into a deep sleep…

She was attending to a patient on a gurney, giving the nurses instructions. Kerry had taken one of the patients and was doing the same a few feet away from her. A terrible smell was riding, permeating the entire department. Probably had to do with that purple-brown good streaked across the floor.

To Susan’s left, she heard the sound of Kerry’s crutch clattering to the floor. It was a sound she was familiar with, as Suzie sometimes tried to play with it or move it. (Either that or Kerry didn’t pay attention to where she’d left it and knocked it over while cooking.)

Susan looked up. 

Kerry was standing stock still, frozen, her back to her. 

And then, in one horrible, timeless moment, she collapsed. 

Susan watching in shocked horror as Kerry’s knees buckled beneath her. She fell spread-eagled onto her back. Her head hit the tile floor hard. 

“Kerry?  _ Kerry?! _ ” Susan heard herself call out. 

She wanted to let go of the gurney she was grippin, to give this patient to someone else so she could go take care of Kerry, but she couldn’t seem to release it.

There was yelling. Other staff, the other of the chemical workers…

_ Don’t touch her. Don’t touch the stuff. Don’t be the next one to pass out. _

But Susan  _ needed _ to touch her. SHe  _ needed _ to get to her, to make sure she was okay.

Her hands had just released the gurney and her feet beneath her began to move when Kerry began to shake. 

It was small at first. Twitching. But it was only a matter of seconds before she was convulsing.

_ Don’t touch her. Make sure you have gloves on. Don’t touch her without gloves on. _

Susan had gloves on. Susan could touch her. 

SUsan rushed to Kerry’s side, holding her breath against the smell of the benzene.

“Kerry? Kerry, can you hear me?” Susan asked loudly. “If you can hear me, squeeze my hand.”

Though the seizing had stopped, Kerry did not respond to Susan’s request. 

Someone appeared at Susan’s side with a backboard. 

Carefully, they slid it under Kerry’s back so they could lift her onto the gurney. 

The seizing began anew once the backboard was on the gurney. And with them, the all-too-familiar lurching of someone about to vomit. 

“Roll her!”

Susan and the others did as instructed, just in time for Kerry to get sick. Someone (Susan didn’t know nor care who) had been trying to tub her, but when she got sick, the best they could do was try and clear as much of it off as they could before they put an oxygen mask on her.

Immediately, the gurney started to roll towards the trauma room. Susan watched as the other staff treating Kerry began to cut her clothes off and she was overcome with an urge to make them stop. They hadn’t even bothered to put a gown over her before they exposed her. 

She wasn’t just some nameless trauma patient. She was their  _ boss _ . She was their  _ friend _ . Couldn’t they show some damn respect?

They’d barely stabilized her before the gurney was moving again.

This time, it moved away from the trauma room. Away from the trauma room, into the hallway, and out the ER doors. 

No. No, that couldn’t be right. They couldn’t be  _ leaving _ . It was January for God’s sake. In  _ Chicago _ .They couldn’t just go outside. 

But they did. Against Susan’s wishes and control, the gurney was pushed out the door and into the black of the night. 

Susan felt Kerry’s shoulder move near her hand. She felt her mouth open, ready to call out for more Ativan to stop the seizure she was sure was coming. But as soon as she was ready to yell she realized it wasn’t a seizure after all. 

It was shivering.

Susan pulled the thin sheet on the gurney higher over Kerry’s shoulders before time seemed to blur. It didn’t move faster or slow, but rather shifted with skipping in between.

The gurney was gone and with it Kerry. Susan spun about trying to figure out where it had gone and found only minorly relieving to see it under the HazMat shower. 

Did she need a shower too? Apparently not, seeing as they would have pulled Susan under the hot chemical shower too if it had been necessary. 

After what seemed like an eternity, the gurney was rolled back out and back into Susan’s care. 

“Susan?”

The voice was so weak that Susan almost missed it amidst the din and the chaos around her. 

Susan looked around, searching for the owner of the voice. When she found it, her breath caught in her throat.

“Hi,” she breathed, brushing her hand across Kerry’s cheek.

“Susan, why are we outside?”

Well, that answered the question of orientation to place.

“Do you remember what happened?”

It was clear from the way Kerry’s brow furrowed slightly that she didn’t. But before Susan could explain, she was being directed back inside. 

But not into the ER.

No, she was supposed to take her patient (of which there was only one, though feasibly it should have been more) up to the cafeteria. 

Had she been in her own right mind (or, well,  _ awake _ ), she may have remembered something Kerry had said about the ER evacuating to the rehab floor. But neither of these things were quite true at the moment, so she just followed the caravan of staff and patients to the cafeteria. 

Kerry was starting to come to a little more. Or, at the very least, her eyes seemed to remain open a bit longer in between bouts of unconsciousness.

“Susan?”

“I’m here,” Susan reassured her, slipping her hand into Kerry’s. “I’m here.”

“Why are-” Kerry looked around. “What are we doing in the cafeteria?”

“We had to come in here because of the chemical spill,” Susan explained softly. 

“There was a-a-a chemical spill?” Kerry asked, her brow furrowing. “I don’t remember that.”

“That’s because you had a… a…” Susan took a deep breath. “A seizure. From the chemicals.”

“I… I-I-I did?”

Susan wasn’t sure what was worse - the sadness and confusion in Kerry’s voice or the fear in her eyes. 

“Hey, Dr. Lewis? Can we get some help over here?”

Carter was shouting for her. Somewhere, a monitor screamed. A patient needed help and Carter couldn't handle it on his own.

But the moment Susan started forward to help him, she felt Kerry’s grip on her hand tighten . 

“Don’t leave me alone,” Kerry said in a tiny, terrified whisper. “Please.”

If Kerry telling her that she loved her wasn’t enough for Susan to believe her, this would do it.

In a room full of bustling people (her colleagues no less), surrounded by those who were expertly trained to treat her, when shaked and confused and unsure of where she was or what was going on, she could trust Susan would take care of her. That even amidst all of this, if she was with Susan, she was safe. 

Susan awoke with a start. 

Instinctively, she felt for Kerry, and found her still asleep and curled into her side. 

Settling back into her pillow, Susan pulled Kerry close to her. And, proving that she wasn’t quite as asleep as she should be, Kerry cuddled herself deeper into Susan’s arms. 

And, in a small voice Susan nearly missed as she began to drift back of to sleep, came a very simple statement affirming that which Susan had felt in the dream:

“I’m glad you’re here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, yes, I know I've already done an "Exodus" chapter in the AU, but I found this in a notebook and remembered how much I liked it. 
> 
> As I recall, something like this was my original idea for [Chapter 19 of "Unexpected Circumstances"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18901180/chapters/46707901) but at the time, I couldn't quite get the idea down. It was while writing this that I realized that I wanted it to be more like a nightmare than the actual unfolding events. A nightmare required a different type of storytelling than an event in the present and I felt it was better told in Susan's POV through a nightmare. (Also, unfolding events better told as a nightmare will come back in the finale of this fic >:)
> 
> It's kind of interesting to me though that, long before I wrote one of the recent chapters of this fic (Chapter 16: Okay) that dealt with Kerry and Susan and the concept of being taken care of by one another, it was a theme that I had thought about for them as a pair. I think it mostly has to do with Kerry as a character, but I had thought about it in the context of their relationship as well. 
> 
> Enough about that for now. I need to go to bed. 
> 
> Until next time.


	20. Titles

Kerry spun the bag of onions closed and secured it with a twist tie before setting it down on the cart in front of Suzie. 

“Okay, Suzie. How many are there?” she asked, spreading them flat in the bag so Suzie could see all of them at once.

“One, two, three, four, five, six,” Suzie counted, pointing to each in turn. “Six!”

“Good job, honey,” Kerry said before placing the bag in the cart. “Can I have the list, please?”

Suzie happily held up the (now crumpled) grocery list Kerry had prepared for today’s trip to the store. 

She pulled a pen out of the pocket of her zip-up sweatshirt and crossed _Onions_ off the list. 

“Next is… apples,” she read aloud before handing the piece of paper (but not the pen) back to Suzie. “How many apples do you think we need?”

“Seventeen!”

“Seventeen apples?” Kerry asked as she pushed the cart forwards towards the fruit part of the produce section. “I think that’s too many.”

“No. We need seventeen,” Suzie stated. 

“That’s too many,” Kerry repeated. “How about ten? Can we get ten apples?”

“Sev-en-teen,” Suzie insisted, enunciating each syllable.

“I think you just like saying ‘seventeen,’” Kerry said, poking Suzie in the belly. “How about you count to seventeen, but we only buy ten?”

Suzie nodded, seemingly content with the negotiation.

When they reached the display of apples, Kerry pushed the cart as close to the display as she could so Suzie could point at each one as she bagged them up. Suzie faltered for a moment over what came after ten, but with a little help, made her way to seventeen (though the additional seven were not bagged up for purchase). 

“That’s such good counting!” a woman nearby gushed to Suzie as Kerry placed the bag of apples into the cart. 

“What do you say, Suzie?” Kerry asked.

“Thank you,” Suzie responded dutifully.”

“You’re very welcome. And so very polite,” the woman said with a smile. “How old are you, sweetie?”

“This many,” Suzie replied, holding up three fingers. 

“No, honey, that’s how many you’re _going_ to be when you have your birthday next month,” Kerry said. “How many are you now?”

Suzie thought for a moment and then put down one finger.

“You’re only _two?_ Wow. That’s _really_ good counting,” the woman said in an impressed voice, looking first at Suzie and then at Kerry. “You must be so proud.”

“I am, yes,” Kerry confirmed, nodding.

The woman smiled at the pride clear on Kerry’s face before she walked away, leaving just the two of them again.

“Okie doke, Suzie. Can I have the list again?”

“List,” Suzie said, holding up the paper. 

Kerry crossed _Apples_ of the list. 

“Alright. It looks like we still need milk.”

“Milk.”

“And butter.”

“Butter.”

Kerry glanced at Suzie over the piece of paper and raised an eyebrow. 

“Are you just going to repeat everything I say?”

Suzie beamed in reply. 

“We need milk and butter.”

“Oh, I see,” Kerry said, handing the list back to her and turning them in the direction of the dairy section. “You’re holding me accountable.”

“‘Countable,” Suzie repeated, nodding sincerely. Then, she paused. “‘Countable… ‘Countable?”

“It means that you’re going to make sure I do what I say I’m going to do,” Kerry explained. She looked down at Suzie. “Your mommy is good at that too.”

At the comparison, Suzie beamed even more. 

They picked up their milk and butter before snaking their way back to the front of the store. Kerry pushed the cart up to the register and began setting the items on the belt for the young woman at the cash register to ring up.

“Did you find everything okay today?” the young woman asked as she began scanning the items. 

“Yes, we did. Thank you.”

“And would you like a sticker today?” the young woman asked Suzie in a higher-pitched voice than she had used to talk to Kerry.

“Yeah!” Suzie replied, bouncing up and down excitedly. 

“What do you say?” Kerry asked, placing the carton of milk on the belt. 

“Thank you,” Suzie replied automatically.

“No, the other one,” Kerry said with a chuckle. 

“Please?” 

Both Kerry and the young woman smiled. The cashier handed Kerry the sticker, which she peeled off the backing and handed to Suzie, who immediately put it over her mouth. 

“I don’t think that’s where the sticker goes,” Kerry said, eyeing Suzie suspiciously. 

Suzie pulled the sticker off her mouth and put it on her shirt.

“It looks like you have a lot of fun shopping with your mommy, don’t you?” the cashier asked as Kerry handed her her credit card. 

Suzie’s giggling subsided as she looked at the cashier. She frowned in confusion.

“My Mommy is at work.”

Kerry flet heat rise in her cheeks as the cashier quickly turned to look at her . Kerry offered a sheepish smile before muttering in a low voice, “I’m her… babysitter.”

The cashier nodded, color rising in her own cheeks as she finished the transaction. Kerry did not linger long after she took her card back and instead just muttered a word of thanks before rushing back to the parking lot. 

For one so often perceived by others as unflappable and resoundingly self-assured, it really wasn’t very hard to embarrass Kerry. 

She considered this as she loaded Suzie and then the groceries into the car. But, as she shifted the car into drive and pulled out of the lot headed for home, she figured that this instance of embarrassment was different.

She was just surprised, she thought. She had been telling herself that Suzie had started to view her as a mother just as she had started to view her as her daughter, so Suzie outright saying that that wasn’t true just… hurt a little bit. But it was different than the other times she felt embarrassed, like when others questioned her ability or strangers stared at her wondering what a woman her age needed a mobility aid for. 

But, though Kerry was highly skilled in her selected field, she was not so skilled in matters of mental health. For if she was, she would know that this embarrassment was one in the same. 

Her counselor had said that her insecurity and self-consciousness was due to her schema, or her larger lens or or belief system that led to her thought distortions. These distortions - disqualifying the positive in situations and focusing only on the negative, the “should” statements that pushed her to overachieve, the minimization she used to convince herself that past instances of prejudice against her were not as important or influential as they really were - were all based in an overarching schema of shame. That she was defective, inferior even, and that others would inevitably leave her if/when they really figured this out. (For if even her birth parents didn’t want her, how could she know anyone else would?)

“Can we go to the park?” Suzie asked as they drove past a playground.

“Not today, sweetie,” Kerry replied. “It's going to rain soon.”

“But can we go _now_? It’s not raining now.”

“No, Suzie. We need to go home and eat lunch. Then, you can play for a little while before your nap.”

“I’m too big for naps,” Suzie said, pouting.

Kerry couldn’t help but smile slightly at the young girl’s sincerity (and the yawn that followed her statement).

They managed to find a spot on the street right outside their house. Kerry climbed out of the car first before crossing around the car to release Suzie from her car seat. 

“Can I carry a bag?” Suzie asked as she waited on the curb for Kerry to retrieve her crutch and the grocery bags.

“Sure you can,” Kerry replied, threading her arm through the cuff of the crutch. “You can carry… this one.”

She handed Suzie a light bag and pointed the girl up the stairs. Suzie dutifully followed the instruction, waiting patiently at the door for Kerry to climb the stairs and unlock the door.

She held it open for Suzie to step inside and, without being asked, Suzie marched straight down the hall into the kitchen. Kerry followed, setting the bags she carried on the island and then taking the bag Suzie held out to her.

“Thank you, dear,” Kerry said as she picked Suzie up and settled her on her right hip. She kissed the young girl on her forehead. “You’re very helpful and I appreciate it.”

Suzie beamed at the compliment. Then, she threw her arms around Kerry and nuzzled her face into Kerry’s neck. Kerry hugged her back, stroking her hair gently before kissing Suzie’s forehead again and putting her down in the high chair at the island.

As she set about preparing the lunch Suzie had requested (“Macaroni and cheese and seventeen apples.”), she considered the hug. 

It had warmed her, as hugs from Suzie always did, but it also hurt a bit too. 

It was really selfish for it to hurt, she thought. Just because Suzie didn’t view her as a mother didn’t mean that she didn’t _care_ about her. Just as it didn’t change the way Kerry cared about her. 

(But even though she considered this logically, it didn’t change the fact that it still kind of hurt.)

Kerry set a pot of water on the stove to boil and then sliced one apple (not seventeen) into (seventeen) pieces that she set on the tray of the high chair. Suzie counted them out loud and found it a satisfactory answer to her request.

A crack of lightning lit up the world outside the window as rain began to fall hard overhead. But before thunder followed it, the phone rang. 

Given that the water had begun to boil at the same moment, Kerry let it ring through to voicemail.

“Hey. It’s me,” Susan’s voice said after the recording began.

“Mommy?” Suzie asked, perking up and looking around at the sound voice.

“You’re probably out, but I wanted to call because Elizabeth just invited me over tonight and I wanted to see if it would be-”

Once she dumped the box of pasta into the water, Kerry picked the phone to answer. Suzie deflated a bit now that she couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation, but patiently waited until Kerry finished before saying anything.

“Was that Mommy?”

“Yes, dear. That was mommy,” Kerry answered. “She won’t be home until late tonight.”

“Because of work?” Suzie asked, her expression growing angry at the thought.

“Not tonight,” Kerry said, shaking her head. “She’s going out tonight and probably won’t be back until after you’ve gone to bed.”

“So, I won’t see her ‘til tomorrow?” Suzie whined. 

“I’m afraid not. You’re stuck with me.” Kerry stepped forward and stroked Suzie’s hair reassuringly. “But you’ll have her _all day_ tomorrow.”

“And you too?” she asked hopefully. 

“No, honey. I have to go to work tomorrow.”

The young girl wilted at the prospect. Kerry stroked her cheek in what she hoped was a soothing gesture before her attention was pulled back towards the stove. 

Not even macaroni could help lift Suzie’s spirits, as the knowledge that Susan would not be home until she woke up tomorrow weighed heavily on her little shoulders. Kerry tried to engage her in some of her favorite activities like coloring or playing _Lion King_ , but it didn’t work (and Suzie’s growing tiredness didn’t help).

After a disagreement over watching _Arthur_ on PBS nearly led to a meltdown, Kerry sat down on the couch and sighed. 

“How about we read a book?” she suggested as Suzie rubbed her eyes. 

(She didn’t dare say ‘nap’ for fear of another meltdown that would only prove how necessary the nap was.)

Suzie, who had started pouting out of a mixture of being unable to find something fun to do and her sleepiness, did not respond for a long moment. But then, she sighed and turned for the bookshelf. 

Once her selection had been made, she climbed up onto the couch next to Kerry and handed the book over. 

“Can I sit on your lap today?” Suzie asked, her previous frustration conceding to drowsiness. “Or does it hurt?”

“Yes, you can sit on my lap today,” Kerry said, nodding and waving her up. “Thank you for asking me.”

Suzie nodded as sincerely as she could this close to naptime before scrambling forward into Kerry’s arms. 

For a second, given how still Suzie became after cuddling onto Kerry’s lap, it appeared that they may not make it to the book after all. But after a moment, Suzie turned over which led Kerry to kick her legs up onto the couch.

“ _The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything_ ,” Kerry said, reading the title aloud.

“You have to say it right.”

“What do you mean ‘say it right’?”

“You have to say it right,” Suzie repeated. “ _The Little Old Lady Who Was NOT AfRAID OF ANYthing.”_

“Oh, right, right. Yes. T _he Little Old Lady Who Was NOT AfRAID OF ANYthing,_ ” Kerry said again, repeating the prescribed enunciation.

She could feel Suzie nod in affirmation before relaxing back into her chest. 

Kerry opened the book and began to read the tale of the little old lady who was not afraid of anything. Not the shoes (which went _clomp, clomp_ ) nor the pants (that went _wiggle, wiggle_ ) or the shirt (that went _shake, shake_ ) or the gloves (that went _nod, nod_ ).

Suzie started to do some of the motions that went with each thing the little old lady was not afraid of, but by the time the pumpkin (that went _boo, boo!_ ), she was too tired to participate. 

When Kerry had reached the final page, she was sure she was going to have to carry a now-asleep toddler downstairs. But just as she was considering whether it would be worth it just to lay her down in the master bedroom, Suzie sighed. 

“I like reading books with you, Momma.”

“I like reading books with you too, sweetheart,” Kerry replied, leaning forward slightly to kiss Suzie on the head. Then, she paused. “Suzie, did you just call me Momma?”

“Uh-huh.” Suzie turned to look up at her. “Why?”

“Well, you’ve never called me that before,” Kerry said slowly, though her heart was beginning to beat so fast that it threatened to explode out of her chest. “And you have your mommy too-”

“Yeah. You’re Momma and Mommy is Mommy. So no one is confused,” Suzie stated matter-of-factly. Kerry nodded, but her hesitation made Suzie frown. “Is that okay?”

“Oh, yes, honey,” Kerry reassured her. “And so earlier when the lady at the store asked if you liked shopping with mommy and you said your mommy was at work, you meant _Mommy_ was at work.”

“Yeah, because I was with Momma. ‘Cause you’re Momma.”

Kerry nodded again, this time more assuredly. She squeezed Suzie tight. 

“I see now. And I am very happy to be your Momma.”

Kerry laid on the couch, half-listening to _CNN_ while she flipped through a recent issue of _Chicago_ magazine, when she heard the sound of the door. 

Susan kicked off her shoes and shrugged out of her coat. Kerry met her at the end of the hallway to greet her with a kiss.

“How was your ‘girls night’?” Kerry asked as she pulled out of the kiss.

“A lot of fun. I really like Elizabeth Corday,” Susan said as she stretched her arms up above her head. “Though, I was _not_ expecting her to ask me about my sex life two seconds after I walked in the door. Nor was I expecting Carol to throw me under the bus and make _me_ answer because apparently Elizabeth had asked her right before I came and she didn’t want to answer… Because she’s dating Doug again. Like anyone’s surprised.”

“And what did you say about your sex life?

“Well, at first, I was doing a really good job of being honest without using any names or pronouns,” Susan explained as she turned for the fridge. “But then I made the mistake of saying that most of the time, we’re too tired for sex so we just collapse into bed. At which point, I started lying my ass off.

“If anyone asks, I’m dating a tall, broad-shouldered rugby player named Marcus that is really good with Suzie and you’re totally cool with staying at our house sometimes.”

Kerry chuckled and took a seat one one of the barstools at the kitchen island.

“Speaking of Suzie,” Susan continued. “How was she today?”

“She was great,” Kerry said, her smile growing. “She, uh… She called me ‘Momma.’”

“She did, did she?”

“Yeah. She said that I am Momm _a_ and you are Momm _y._ So we don’t get confused.”

Susan considered this for a moment, but her pause made Kerry’s brow furrow as the realization dawned on her.

“I should have checked with you,” she said, half-stating, half-thinking out loud. “I told her it was okay, but I should have made sure it was okay with you first, right? I mean… I don’t want you to think I’m taking anything away from what you have with her, I just-”

“Kerry, Kerry, relax. I think it’s great.” Susan set down the Diet Coke she had just pulled from the fridge and laid reassuring hands on Kerry’s arms. “And you’re not taking anything away. You’re just adding to it. Come on, I mean, you and I have been co-parenting much longer than we’ve been together. And you’ve certainly been around much longer than Chloe ever was. So, relax. I think you’ve earned the title of ‘Suzie’s mom.’ Well, one of them.”

Kerry’s brow unfurrowed a bit at her words and even more when Susan kissed her deeply on the lips. 

But when Susan pulled away, she considered Kerry curiously. 

“What?” Kerry asked, her brow ready to furrow once more.

“It’s just… Well, if _I’m_ Suzie’s mom and _you’re_ Suzie’s mom… Does that make you my wife?”

Kerry laughed and rolled her eyes. But then her smile faded and was replaced with a look of surprised (and confused) realization.

“Wait, does it?”

“I think that’s usually the way it works. Of course, no one would know but us.” 

Susan stepped closer to Kerry, draping her arms around Kerry’s neck, which in turn led Kerry to stand up and wrap her arms around Susan’s waist. 

They kissed deeply again. 

“So, much for Marcus the rugby player,” Kerry said, raising an eyebrow as she looked up at Susan.

“It’s okay,” Susan said, feigning disappointment as she shrugged. “As I made up stories about him, it occurred to me that he was kind of a pushover. I don’t know… Something tells me that’s not really my type.”

Kerry grinned, blushing slightly as she rested her head on Susan’s chest.

“And maybe someday,” Susan mused as she pulled Kerry tighter to her, “‘wife’ won’t be just a title, but a reality. You know, like twenty years from now.”

“Who says I’m gonna be around in twenty years?”

Susan pulled back enough to look down at Kerry. 

“You’re one of Suzie’s moms. You _better_ be around in twenty years,” Susan said in a I’m-joking-but-I’m-really- _not-_ joking sort of way. “Even if we’re not together. You better be in it for her-”

“I’m _kidding_ , I’m kidding,” Kerry assured her. “I just hope it doesn’t take twenty years.”

Once Susan was sure she really _was_ kidding, she pulled Kerry back to her. 

“Let’s see… It’s 1998 now, so twenty years would be… 2018? Suzie would be… 23?” Susan sighed. “Yeah. I don’t want to wait that long.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, everyone! Sorry it has taken me a couple days, but I was writing a midterm paper. (Can you tell I had my class on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy this week???) 
> 
> Thank you to the-company-kept for the prompt of Suzie calling Kerry ‘Momma’ for the first time. I enjoyed toying around with this concept as well as coming up with the ending.
> 
> It's been a reeeally good day. I finished my homework, finished this, _and_ had an incredible meeting with my boss. You know that one scene in season 4 where Anspaugh tells Kerry she'sdoing a great job as Acting Chief of Emergency Services and when she walks out of his office and her reaciton is ike " _Fuck yeah!_ " Yeah, it was like that. 
> 
> Without going into too much detail, I can say that I've been in my current position for eight months. It was a brand new role at my agency and, as far as we know, no other role like mine exists... anywhere. My role exists elsewhere and my practice setting exists elsewhere, but (so far as we know) my role in my practice setting does not exist. It's a unique job that was a perfect fit for both parties. 
> 
> It is also an interdisciplinary role, with my role introducing a new discipline to the practice. And today, while we talked, I brought up a concept to her and suggested that, since we operate under the concept informally a lot already, we should move forward to formalize it, with would require staff _and_ the Board of Directors to be on board with it (no pun intended). I was merely suggesting it as a way to start the conversation and she offered me a place on the agenda at the Board Meeting next month to talk to them about it. It's easy to say that I was _vibing_ when I came out of that meeting.
> 
> Also, I'm increasing the number of chapters to twenty-five. I thought of a couple additional prompts, but more importantly, I refuse to end on twenty-one. I hope you all are happy and appreciate my suffering. (It's not really suffering I promise.)
> 
> Anyways, I hope you're all well. Until next time.


	21. All In The Family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before you panic at the title, remember this is the AU. So, shit still goes down, but not the shit you may be panicking about.

Kerry stared at the bassinets of the nursery, her mind simultaneously blank and so full that her head may very well explode.

There was no need to wonder from afar which baby was hers. 

Upon discovering that Charlie’s hip had been dislocated at birth, Anna quickly fitted her with the Pavlik harness meant to keep her hips in place. It made Charlie stand out amongst the other babies that had been born that day. 

One in a thousand. That was the odds Anna gave her. One in a thousand babies needed treatment for hip dysplasia at birth. If about 360,000 babies were born each day around the world, that meant 300 of them would have hip dysplasia at birth and require intervention to treat it.

Charlie was one of them. And almost thirty-nine years ago, Kerry had been too. 

What were the odds of that? she wondered. Two people out of seven billion who just happened to be part of the same family and have the same congenital birth defect despite not sharing  _ any _ DNA? 

She wanted to talk to someone, but not Susan. Though she loved Susan with all her heart, she didn’t want to scare her with her fear. She needed to talk to someone who had been through this before. 

She wished her mother was still alive. To take part in the celebration of Charlie’s birth, yes, but more so so she could ask her what to do. 

What was it like? How did she handle it? How did she proceed?

But, even if Mildred Weaver  _ was _ still alive and able to offer advice, Kerry worried she’d scare her with her fear too. Her mother had taken her fear and shame so personally. Having her grown daughter express fear over dealing with a newborn daughter that had the same condition she had had her entire life would have laid Mildred incredibly low.

“Hey, Kerry.”

Kerry turned to see Peter Benton making his way down the hall towards her. 

“Peter, what are you doing up here?” 

“Female choking patient in the ER. I had to crike her. She was in labor, so I was helping to bring her up here.” Peter explained. He turned and looked through the window of the nursery. “Checking on a patient?”

“No, actually. Um… Uh, Susan had the baby.  _ Our _ baby. Susan had our baby.”

“Oh. Congratulations,” Peter said, clapping her gently on the shoulder. “Can you tell which one’s yours?”

“Yes,” Kerry answered automatically, the small smile that had crept onto her face at Peter’s congratulation disappearing in an instant. “Uh, second row. Last one on the right.”

Peter scanned the second row of newborns until he found the one Kerry had pointed out. 

“The one in the… What is that? A sling?”

“Her…” Kerry inhaled deeply. “One of her hips was dislocated at birth.”

Peter nodded slowly, still looking through the window.

“Is there a need for surgical intervention?”

Kerry’s chest clenched with the thought. 

“Conservative treatment first,” she replied, willing her voice not to break. “If that’s not successful, there are… Surgery may be an option later.”

But even in willing her voice not to betray the anxiety she felt, there was still enough of it that it made Peter look at her. 

She looked a bit of a wreck, but given what he had heard had taken place in the ER earlier this evening, he wasn’t surprised.

There were dark circles under her eyes, which were puffy as if she’d been crying non stop for several hours. The blue scrubs she wore were at least one if not two sizes too big on her making her look smaller than usual. She looked almost as if she herself had been brought into the ER today as opposed to having worked a shift in it. 

In other words, she did not look at all like a woman celebrating the birth of her child. 

A long moment of silence fell between them. Kerry’s mind fell back into that empty fullness as Peter considered what to say.

“You know, Kerry,” he said slowly. “I, uh… Last year, when I was going through all the stuff with Reese, you had me meet your friend. The, uh, the family physician that’s Deaf. And back then, I was… I was kind of thrown, but… But it actually ended up being really helpful.”

Peter sighed deeply, which made Kerry look up at him.

“What I’m trying to say is…” Peter took another deep breath. “If I could return the favor, I would.”

The sentiment almost made Kerry start crying again. 

She thought about how Peter had reacted when she’d encouraged him to meet Lisa Parks. He’d come back frustrated with her, thinking she’d sent him to a head and neck surgeon to consult with about a cochlear implant for Reese. Hearing him express his appreciation for it now, and knowing how much he’d committed himself to learning ASL and about the Deaf community for Reese’s sake, she couldn’t help but choke up. 

What would he think if he knew that the doctor he wished he could suggest she talk to to get the same kind of clarity he had was the very doctor he was speaking to right now?

“Thank you, Peter,” she said shakily. “I… I appreciate it.”

He nodded just as his pager went off. 

Immediately, he made to apologize. But she just waved him off, thanking him once again as he ran off down the hallway.

After a few more minutes watching Charlie, Kerry turned down the hallway. She arrived at the room to find Susan fast asleep. 

For a moment, she considered curling up in the space on the bed Susan had clearly left for her, but she didn’t. Instead, she just sighed, kissed Susan’s sleeping form on the forehead, and started for the elevator. 

Perhaps she had never noticed how loud County’s elevators were. But, more likely, she was rarely this emotionally and physically exhausted when riding them before, and the banging of aging machinery had never ground itself so deep into her head.

When she stepped out into the ER, she found it quieter than she expected. 

It was not the quiet that goaded goofing off and misbehavior, but the solemn quiet of an institution where people regularly came to die. It just so happened that tonight, the person who died had been much closer to home than any of them had expected. 

“Kerry?” 

She looked up to see Mark running forward towards her.

“Mark,” she replied in a tired voice. “Good. I’m glad you’re here.”

“Yeah. Carter called me in,” Mark explained as he drew even with her. “He said that Carmen got stabbed? And that you couldn’t find Susan?”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s…” Kerry sighed. “That’s what happened.”

“And?” Mark continued, his eyebrows rising urgently. “Did you find her?”

“What? Oh. Oh, yes,” Kerry reassured him. “Yes, she… She went into labor, so she went upstairs to have the baby.”

If Mark’s eyebrows could have risen anymore, they would have.

_ “And?” _ he pushed. “Is she still in labor? Or-”

“No, no. She had the baby,” Kerry said, her exhaustion keeping her from continuing the conversation as she normally would. “She’s sleeping.”

“And the baby?”

Before Kerry could reply, there were footsteps. She followed the sound of them to see Malucci jogging towards her, Abby Lockhart close at his heels.

“Chief, did you find her?”

“We kept looking, but couldn’t find her,” Abby asked, skidding to a halt in front of the two Attendings. “We kept looking but then we couldn’t find you either-”

“It’s okay. I found her,” Kerry said, nodding sincerely. “She went into labor so she headed up to L&D. But she forgot to tell anyone where she was going.”

“So, she had the baby?” Malucci asked. 

“Yes, she had the baby. She and the baby are both upstairs asleep.”

Abby and Malucci wanted to know the details just as much as Mark did, but instead of continuing to pester Kerry with questions, they just started pushing her in the direction of the Admit Desk. And before she could process what was happening (or tell them to stop), she was in front of a group of ER staff, who all perked up at her arrival.

“The Chief found Dr. Lewis,” Malucci explained. “Apparently she went upstairs to have the baby.”

There were a few excited gasps as attention turned back to Kerry. The staff all looked at her expectantly. 

Kerry took a deep breath, expecting more tears. But instead, as she spoke the words aloud, she felt a smile curl her lips. 

“It’s a girl.” 

The crowd of staff lit up. A few cheered. Others clapped. 

“What’s her name?” Haleh asked on behalf of those gathered. 

“Charlotte Henrietta Lewis. Susan wants to call her Charlie,” Kerry informed them with a small chuckle. “Seven pounds, ten ounces and eleven and a half inches.”

There were more cheers, this time followed by showers of congratulations as well as a few handshakes and several hugs. 

“So, can we go see her?” Lucy asked, wiping away her own tears of both happiness and relief. 

There were a lot of mutters of agreement, but Kerry just chuckled again and shook her head.

“No, no, no. You can come tomorrow. Or, better yet, you can visit once they come home.”

There was a collective groan of disappointment, but the staff conceded nonetheless. Then, they offered a few more congratulations and well-wishes before departing back for their respective patients. 

“Wait, Mark,” Kerry said, catching Mark’s arm before he too could walk away.

“Yeah?”

“You can come up and visit whenever you want. You’re Susan’s best friend. The rule doesn’t apply to you,” Kerry said in a low voice. Mark smiled warmly and nodded. Kerry smiled in reply and then sighed. “Honestly, I think if it had lasted any longer, she’d probably would have ended up wishing you were there with her instead of me.”

“Nah. I doubt that,” Mark said, shaking his head. “She really loves you. And you guys seem great together.”

Kerry could both a rush of color to her cheeks as well as yet more tears. 

“Thank you, Mark.”

“Of course,” he said, smiling again. “So, Charlie, is it? How is she? Everything healthy?”

“Yes, she’s very healthy. There was a little concern about…”

Kerry’s voice trailed off, leading Mark’s brow to furrow. 

“About what? Is everything okay?”

“About… It’s nothing.” Kerry shook her head, those tears she had felt rise now sliding down her cheeks. “She’s… She’s perfect. And she’s beautiful, though she looks like Susan, so it would be hard for her not to be.”

Mark chuckled and pulled Kerry into a hug. She hugged him back, though when she pulled away, she appeared slightly confused. 

“I don’t think we’ve ever hugged before, have we?” Mark asked slowly, narrowing his eyes as he tried to recall.

“No, I… I don’t think we have,” Kerry said, equally slowly. “But it was nice. Thank you.”

Mark smiled, but as he did so, he saw her glance towards the yellow crime scene tape that had been hung around the exam room in which Carmen had been found. And, immediately, her own smile disappeared and was replaced with a look of shock. 

“I didn’t call Carmen’s parents,” she remembered out loud. “I-I was supposed to, but I got sidetracked with Susan and-”

“Kerry, don’t worry about it. Carter already called them,” Mark explained in a calm, comforting voice. “They’re on their way from Cleveland, so they’ve still got a couple hours before they get here.”

“Oh. Okay.” Kerry took a few deep breaths. “Alright, well… I’m going to take our things upstairs. Will you- will you page me when they get here?”

“No,” Mark said, shaking his head. “You don’t need to worry about that tonight. You go be with Susan and Charlie.”

“But, Mark-”

“I’ll handle it. I promise. And if you want, I’ll tell them that you’ll follow up with them later,” he offered, before looking her in the eye. “Now, go upstairs and enjoy the birth of your daughter. You don’t get to do that every day.”

Her natural instinct was to argue back, but the thought of not having to talk to the Vargas-Vega family tonight lifted a weight from her shoulders. She just nodded and proceeded to fetch her and Susan’s things from their lockers before returning to the Labor and Delivery floor.

“Hey,” Susan greeted sleepily, stretching and sitting up when Kerry arrived. “I wondered where you went. Looking after Charlie in the nursery?

“For a little bit,” Kerry replied. She crossed to an empty chair on the opposite side of the bed to deposit their things. “Then, I stopped downstairs to tell everyone the happy news. And not to come up here until tomorrow.”

Susan chuckled and leaned her head back against the pillow. She watched Kerry arrange their coats, a small smile on her face.

“They should be bringing Charlie back any second,” she informed her. “We’re supposed to try breastfeeding.” 

“Both of us?” Kerry asked, pulling another empty chair closer to the bed and sitting down. “That may be a bit difficult.”

“There’s drugs for that,” Susan said, shrugging as Kerry took her hand. “If you’d like to help out.”

Kerry chuckled and squeezed her hand as there was a shuffling sound from near the door. They both looked up to see the tall nurse pushing the bassinette back into the room.

“How are we doing, mom?” she asked brightly as she lifted Charlie up and placed her in Susan’s arms. Then, she looked at Kerry. “And, uh, other mom?”

“We’re doing good,” Susan replied as she adjusted Charlie in her arms. 

Kerry watched her coo at Charlie for a moment before the nurse began giving Susan instructions on how to nurse Charlie while maintaining the right position for Charlie’s hips. 

As the nurse and the new (and also old) mother started maneuvering the newborn around, Kerry paid attention to their hands. How they lifted her, how they supported her neck, where they placed her. Part of it was out of protection for her new daughter, but the more urgent voice in her head told her to do it for other reasons.

“How do you hold her with only one hand?” 

Susan and the nurse both turned to look at Kerry, who seemed as surprised as they were to hear the words come out of her mouth. But her surprise was no match for the urgency with which she spoke. 

“Well, ideally, you always want to use two hands,” the tall nurse said slowly. “For the best support. I know a lot of parents want to know how to hold the baby in one hand so they can do housework and stuff, but when they’re this young, it’s not really in the best interest of the baby to-” 

The woman cut herself off as she saw the frightened look on Kerry’s face and the heartbroken look on Susan’s face as she looked at Kerry. She almost asked what was the matter (as they both appeared to have two good arms), when she noticed Kerry’s crutch leaning against the chair. 

“Oh. I mean…I mean, you  _ can  _ hold her in just one hand, if you- if you have to.” The nurse took a second to collect her thoughts. “Over your shoulder is one option. And… and maybe football-style? With her head resting near your elbow? As long as the hips stay spread out and her neck is adequately supported, you should be fine.”

“Can you give us a minute?” Susan said (well, told) the nurse. 

The tall nurse nodded quickly and scurried out of the room for the nursing station down the hall. But Susan paid her no mind, as her focus was instead on her wife. Her wife, who was now staring down at her lap, her face red with embarrassment for the events of the previous moment.

“Hey. Talk to me.”

Her hands full with Charlie, Susan would have tried kicking at Kerry off the side of the bed, but painkillers and a very recent vaginal birth made the latter impossible. So, instead, she (carefully) scooted closer to the edge of the bed so she was as close as she could be to Kerry.

“Kerry.” 

Kerry let out a deep breath she didn’t know she had been holding. She shook her head. 

“It’s nothing. It’s… I shouldn’t have said anything.” 

“It’s obviously not nothing,” Susan pressed. “I thought we talked about that kind of stuff already. Adaptations and all that. And you seemed okay with all that as recently as yesterday, so what changed? Is it Carmen? Do you…. Have you slept at all yet?”

Sometimes, Kerry thought Susan was  _ too _ patient with her. That she didn’t deserve the way Susan made her talk out her feelings after outbursts or even arguments. But, she knew it was part of the balance, for as often as Susan made Kerry divulge her thoughts, she called Kerry on her bullshit. 

“We did talk about it. But we didn’t-” Kerry sucked in a breath to try and stop herself from crying for the third time in an hour. “But we didn’t talk about  _ this.” _

Though Susan’s immediate thought was, yes, they most certainly had talked about the possibility that there could be something wrong when the baby was born (as it was an inevitability that all parents should consider before the baby is born and not just after), she realized Kerry meant the statement very specifically. 

They had talked about the possibilities, but had never considered specifically about  _ this _ possibility. 

“Kerry,” Susan said in a very low voice. “Are… Are you scared?”

Kerry glanced up at her, disbelief evident on her face. 

“Are you telling me you’re  _ not?” _

Susan shrugged slightly, which caused Charlie to let out a squeak of displeasure. (Not pain or anything. Just simply displeasure.)

“Not really. Mostly because Anna said it was a pretty effective way to treat it,” she admitted. “And, I guess I figured that even if nothing worked, well… she’d have you. Because I have you and, I don’t know, I guess I just didn’t think much of it.”

But, though her words were meant to reassure Kerry, speaking them caused Susan to frown. 

“ _ Should _ I be scared?”

Kerry honestly didn’t know how to respond. It was her exact worry in telling Susan how scared she was. She didn’t want to make Susan scared too.

Luckily, before she could even consider how to phrase a response, the was sound near the door again. But instead of the tall nurse coming to help with lactation, it was one far-too-excited-for-this-time-of-morning Suzie Lewis. 

“I want to see the baby! I want to see the baby!” she chanted excitedly as she rushed into the room. 

Suzie was ready to jump onto the bed before anyone had time to process her arrival, let alone her request. However, before she could divebomb her mother or newborn sister, someone caught her. 

“Hey. Your Mommy just had a baby. We need to be gentle with them,” Carter said to Suzie before letting go of her arms. 

At his words, Suzie climbed onto the bed in a much more gentle manner than she had previously had tried. She sat forward on her knees to look down at the baby.

“Is it a boy or a girl?”

“She’s a girl,” Susan informed her. “Her name is Charlie.”

“Isn’t Charlie a boy’s name?” Suzie asked, peeringly curiously at her new sister. 

“Sometimes. But it’s a girl’s name too.”

Suzie was barely listening as she leaned closer to the new baby. She cocked her head to one side in question.

“What’s the thingy she has on for?”

“Her hip wasn’t where it was supposed to be when she was born,” Susan informed her quietly. “The doctor put it back into place and the ‘thingy’ keeps it there.”

“So, she has a hip like Momma’s hip?” Suzie asked, looking first to Susan and then to Kerry. “Is she gonna need a crutch too?”

“We don’t know,” Susan replied quickly. “We think the ‘thingy’ will help make sure she doesn’t.”

“Okay. Well, if she does, I think Momma has an extra one. But it might be too big for a baby though,” Suzie thought out loud as she looked at Charlie. “Can I hold her?”

“For a second. But then Mommy has to feed her.”

Suzie nodded earnestly and scrambled into the open space on the bed next to her mother. Once sure she was situated, Susan carefully put Charlie in Suzie’s lap, keeping one hand under the newborn’s head. 

As Suzie talked to her new little sister, Susan glanced at Kerry out of the corner of her eye. 

Suzie’s appearance and subsequent quick brushing off of the news of the harness seemed to have ended their conversation for them. Whatever their fears were, Suzie didn’t seem to share them.

Such was the honesty of young children. It was often brushed off as naivete, but more often it was the sincerest form of understanding and acceptance. Kids just knew. Everything else, good or bad, came later and by lesson.

Carter hung back, his role in taking over for the babysitter and delivering Suzie to the hospital ending as his next shift grew more imminent. 

He could tell that they had walked in on something, but he didn’t know what. And, had his last interaction with Kerry not been the receiving end of a massive telling off, he may have been inclined to ask. 

But before he could sneak out the door while the Weaver-Lewises were distracted by the new baby, he happened to look up and make eye contact with Kerry. Her expression was softer than it had been the last time they spoke. 

She waved him over towards her. 

As he did as instructed, she moved their things off of the chair and invited him to sit down. When he did, she laid a hand on his knee and squeezed it.

“Thank you. For bringing her,” she said in a low voice. “I’m sorry I yelled at you earlier. I was… I was terrified and I took it out on you.

“And I-I don’t think I conveyed to you how glad I was that…” Kerry closed her eyes as she let out a sigh. “How glad I was that you were okay.”

She considered continuing the sentiment, but the very thought of Carter, stabbed and bloody, made her stomach turn. Instead, she just squeezed his knee again.

He gave a weak half smile, before he and Kerry both turned back to look at the two Suzies and the newest (non-Suzie) member of their family. 

Carter had his opportunity to meet Charlie before he bade them farewell to go take over downstairs. Suzie was then coaxed over into his empty seat so that Susan could feed Charlie, much to Suzie’s amazement. ( _“That’s_ what those are for?”)

As Charlie was then passed over to her so that she could rock her to sleep, Kerry had to admit: It may not have been the easiest night she’d had, but it certainly could have been far,  _ far _ worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Leap Day! I hope you're all having a special extra day of February. 
> 
> So, I've been scouring tumblr for ER gifs (and making [more memes if you're interested](https://bwayfan25.tumblr.com/post/190869400819/more-er-au-memes-featuring-some-carter-part)) to inspire my last few chapters of this fic. And since the twentieth annviersary of the events of "All In The Family" was a couple weeks ago, it made sense to me to tackle this one. It was the chapter I was most proud of in the AU and since this is a collection of one-shots and missing scenes about family, it was a no-brainer.
> 
> I think I still have two open prompts left if anyone is interested. Let me know in the comments if you have an idea you'd like to see. 
> 
> Have a great rest of your night and weekend! Until next time.


	22. Stuck on You

Susan glanced briefly at the board, scanning for her initials assigned to any patients that came in before she did. When she found none, she turned back for the rack of charts to pick some out.

Carter had just picked up his own chart off the rack and was skimming through it when Susan looked up at him and frowned. 

“Um, Carter, did you forget your beard at home today?” she asked, motioning to the bare face he definitely didn’t have when she saw him yesterday.

He just rolled his eyes and continued looking through his chart. Before Susan could ask about his response, Mark appeared at her elbow. 

“Leave him be, Susan. He had it when he walked in this morning.”

Susan looked from Mark to Carter and then back to Mark, her jaw dropping as the realization took hold. 

“I’m sorry, Mark, but are you telling me that you forcibly shaved Carter this morning? And you didn’t even have the decency to wait until I got here.”

“We had no choice,” Mark replied with a shrug. “Carter here had an unfortunate run-in with some industrial-strength glue. Lucy had to free him.”

At the sight of Susan lighting up like it was Christmas morning, Carter rolled his eyes again and let out a huff.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s very funny,” he said curtly. “‘Carter had to shave his beard.’ Hahaha.”

“You’re right. It  _ is _ very funny,” Susan said brightly, which led Carter to scoff. 

“Come on, Susan. Go easy on him. It was a pretty  _ sticky _ situation.”

Carter buried his (now-clean-shaven) face in his hands as Susan let out a victorious laugh. 

“Well, Mark, I  _ moustache _ you for all the details.”

Mark sucked in air and shook his head, before replying, “It was a pretty close shave.”

“How close are we talking?” Susan asked, her brow rising. “ _ Razor _ thin?”

“Well, he sort of fell on it,” Mark explained. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a little bit  _ buzzed _ .”

“Oh, come on, Mark. I’m sure Carter  _ adheres _ to all of our policies.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Mark acknowledged with a shrug. “His dedication really is the  _ glue _ that holds us all together.”

“What can I say?” Susan gave her own shrug. “Carter really has strong  _ bonds _ .”

By now, Carter had fully buried his head in his arms at the desk. Those around who were listening to the conversation laughed along at Carter’s expense, but when Kerry arrived at the desk, she observed Carter with a frown.

“What’s wrong?” she asked Carter, before turning her attention to the two Attendings. “What’s going on?”

There was a muffled response from Carter. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”

Carter picked his head up from his arms. 

“They’re mocking me about what happened in the trauma earlier. Using puns.”

“Yes, we are,” Susan confirmed. “And, if we’re in the business of forcibly shaving male physicians, I humbly volunteer to shave Mark.”

When Mark opened his mouth to reply, Susan laid a reassuring hand on his arm. 

“I’ll leave your hair alone. You have so little of it to begin with.”

“How did this become about me?” Mark asked, raising his hands. 

“It’s the  _ goatee, _ Mark,” Susan groaned. “I’m tired of it and it has to go.”

Mark rubbed a hand over his facial hair and frowned. 

“I like it. And, you know, maybe I have a lady friend who likes it too?”

“A ‘lady friend’? What are you… eighty?” Susan asked in confused disbelief. “And for the record,  _ I  _ am both a lady  _ and  _ your friend and I say that you need to shave.”

“Okay. Well, that is between you and Mark.” Kerry laid a hand on Carter’s shoulder. “But as for Carter, I think we should all be glad that’s he’s okay and that his beard was the only thing affected, hmm?”

Susan and Mark both nodded.

“But as for the puns,” Kerry continued, looking at Carter. “I can’t help you with that. I’m afraid you might have to grin and bear it for a while.”

Carter let out a sigh and gave a small shrug. Then, Kerry pointed at her chin, a small smirk on her face.

“ _ Bare  _ it.”

She turned and walked away in the direction of a patient just as Susan lit up again. She leaned forward across the desk to where Carter had buried his face in his arms again and whispered, “I think that means I don’t have to stop.”

Carter picked his head up and fixed her with a look of grumpiness.

“I don’t know if I like this. This whole ‘since you and Kerry are together, she lets you do whatever you want’ thing.”

“Um, excuse me, Carter. She does  _ not _ let me do whatever I want, thank you very much,” Susan corrected. “I still have to follow all the rules and I am not exempt from getting in trouble.”

Carter just looked at her , which led Susan to throw her hands up in defense. 

“Alright, fine,” Susan said, giving in. “What do you want me to say? That I’m pretty and it helps my case?”

“Yeah.”

“Fine. I’m pretty and it helps my case,” Susan said with a toss of her hair. But then she raised her eyebrows at Carter. “But I’ve also lived with her for two years, supported her through coming out, and convinced her to go to therapy. So, I think I’ve earned this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to take a moment to dedicate this chapter to my fiance, the king of puns. I came up with most of these puns in a matter of minutes and it is only because he makes them at every opportunity and is so damn proud of himself when I groan.
> 
> Since this was pretty short, I'm hoping to have another chapter up by the end of the day. I make no promises though as I'm still sort of figuring that one out. I welcome any suggestions you guys might have.
> 
> If I don't post again today, have a great rest of your day and a wonderful rest of your weekend! Until next time.


	23. Optimism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Throwing it back alllll the way to season two.

Susan knew that she was going to get over her frustration with Mark sooner rather than later, but thinking about it still made her mad. 

Why go to all the trouble of asking her opinion on who should be the new Chief Resident and then hire someone completely different? It was bad enough that Jane herself had approached him about it, but the fact that he’d asked for her opinion made Jane feel like a shoe-in.

“Hey, Doug. You gotta minute?”

The pediatrician spun around before leaning sideways against the wall. 

“What’s up?”

“Mark said that you worked some with the new Chief Resident during your residency,” Susan said in a voice that sounded as annoyed as she felt.

“Yeah. A little bit,” Doug replied. “Why?”

“What’s she like?” At the question, Doug sucked in air. Susan grimaced. “That bad?”

“If you want me to be honest? Yeah.” Doug gave a shrug. “Two words: Control issues.”

“Wonderful,” Susan said, rolling her eyes. “Any chance you know how to get on her good side?”

“Far as I can tell, she doesn’t have one,” Doug said (much to Susan’s chagrin). “I mean, for a while there was something that sorta worked, but it won’t work anymore.”

“Like what?”

“Well, back when I was over there, if you got in good with her husband, she’d go a  _ little _ bit easier on you,” Doug explained. “His name was Mike Levin. A surgeon. Very nice guy. Never really understood how they got together.”

“Any chance he’s transferring too?” Susan asked hopefully.

“Nah, they divorced a couple years back. He moved out west somewhere.” 

“Great.” Susan sighed deeply, rubbing a hand across her forehead. “So, we’re getting a new Chief Resident that no one wanted in the first place and she’s not even going to be easy to work with.”

Doug gave a shrug of acknowledgement.

“Don’t look at me. I’m not the Attending who decided it.”

_ “God, _ I don’t need this right now, I’ve already got to deal with Chloe at home. I don’t need anymore stress at work,” Susan groaned. 

“Sisterly cohabitation not working out so well?” Doug asked, earning him a frustrated glance.

“It’s just… I really don’t feel like she’s taking this motherhood thing seriously,” Susan said, shaking her head. “I keep telling her that if she doesn’t shape up, she’s gonna lose Suzie, but I think she thinks I’m saying it just to scare her. So, I end up being the bad guy for saying things like, ‘Check the baby  _ before _ her diaper smells’ or ‘Get a job.’”

Susan sighed deeply.

“Is there a way I could kick Chloe out, but keep Suzie?” she wondered aloud. But then, she shook her head again. “No, I shouldn’t say that. What’s that phrase? ‘Your mouth to God’s ears? Yeah, I shouldn’t say that because that’s honestly the last thing I need right now on top of everything else.”

Before Doug could say anything, Susan scoffed. 

“Chloe keeps telling me I sound negative. And I do. I sound  _ very _ negative.” Susan straightened up. “I’ll try to be optimistic. Maybe… Maybe Chloe will get her shit together, Suzie will get the mother she deserves, and maybe the Chief Resident won’t be so bad.”

“I agree with everything but the last one,” Doug said. But before Susan could respond, he glanced over her head and stood up from his place leaning against the wall. “And it looks like you’re going to have your chance to agree too.”

Susan frowned and turned to follow his line of sight. 

For a second, she couldn’t tell who he was looking at thanks to the sea of doctors, nurses, and patients crossing and criss-crossing the hallway. She was just about to ask who he was talking about when she spotted a redheaded woman walking towards them, supporting herself on a black and silver forearm crutch. 

She looked around as she walked, seemingly taking in the department, before she noticed Doug and fixed him with a slightly surprised look of recognition.

“Doug,” she said in greeting as she drew even with him and Susan. “It’s good to see you. I forgot you came to County for your fellowship.”

She held out her right hand to shake his, releasing the grip of the crutch. Doug shook her hand, albeit stiffly.

“Good to see you too, Kerry,” he replied, his tone not matching the sentiment his words conveyed. “Mark said you weren’t starting until Monday.”

“Yes, well, I figured I’d come get the lay of the land,” she said, resuming her grip on the crutch and glancing around once more. “And I’ve got some paperwork to take care of upstairs.”

“You mean the first day paperwork?” Doug asked, raising his eyebrows. “That people are supposed to take care of their first day?”

“I had the afternoon free. I decided to get it taken care of early.”

Though neither had necessarily taken a swipe at the other, there was something in the overall tone of their words that indicated to Susan that it could happen at any second.

“So, Kerry, how’s Mike?” 

Kerry appeared to stiffen ever so slightly. She smiled slightly, though, it was a bit caustic.

“He’s doing well. He’s still out in Colorado. Though, I think you knew that,” she said, that causticity edging into her tone. “And, uh, he doesn’t appreciate being called ‘Mike.’ He prefers ‘Michael.’”

“He never told me that.”

“No, but he told me,” she said simply. “He was too polite to tell you.”

“I see. And you’re not bound by the same parameters, are you, Kerry?”

“I just think it’s a matter of respect,” Kerry replied, with a small shrug.

Then, as if signaling that that part of the conversation had ended, Kerry turned to Susan and held out her hand again. 

“Kerry Weaver,” she introduced as Susan took her offered hand. “Are you one of the residents?”

“Yes, I am. Susan Lewis. I’m a third-year.”

“Very nice to meet you, Susan. I expect we’ll be working very closely this year.”

“I look forward to it,” Susan replied before frowning at herself for how incredibly ass-kissing that sounded. 

“I do as well,” Kerry replied, before looking back at Doug. “Well, Doug it was nice to see you again. I look forward to seeing you both on Monday. Now, could you point me in the direction of the elevators?”

Doug pointed her down the hall. Kerry smiled and gave a word of thanks before starting towards them.

Susan and Doug watched her go for a moment before Doug turned back to Susan and dropped his voice. 

“And that’s why I’m taking Monday off.”

“She didn’t seem that bad,” Susan said with a shrug. 

“Ah, but you haven’t worked a shift with her yet,” Doug pointed out. “And I know what you’re thinking, but no, I don’t know why she walks with a crutch. No one does. She’s real tight-lipped about it. I even asked Mike once, but he wouldn’t say anything. Almost makes me wonder if she told him.”

“It’s probably none of your business and she  _ just _ told you that he doesn’t like being called that.”

“Eh, she says a lot of things. You’ll learn how to filter out the bullshit,” Doug explained. “And, for the record, most of her criticisms? Bullshit.”

“She’s gonna be criticizing me?” Susan asked, grimacing again.

“Big time. The problem is she’s actually really good, which means it happens a lot. And the ego’s a little bit harder to deflate.”

Susan let out a disappointed sigh, but then immediately straightened up.

“Okay, fine. But I’m still going to try to be optimistic about this.”

“Okay,” Doug said slowly, raising his hands defensively. “But you know what another word for ‘optimism’ is, right?”

“No, what?” Susan asked, frowning.

“Idiocy.”

Susan rolled her eyes and gave him an exasperated smile. 

“Thanks, Doug.”

He gave another defensive shrug. 

“Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.”

She could not deny that Doug had indeed warned her and that only came to haunt her more over the next few weeks. 

Monday brought the new Chief Resident onto the staff officially and with a completely different demeanor than the one she had when they met. Only a few days later, as if God really  _ had _ been listening, Chloe disappeared, leaving Little Suzie in her care. 

Susan tried to remain as optimistic as she possibly could be, but it got harder with each passing day. But she kept the faith, idiotic though it may be. 

Maybe Chloe  _ would _ get her shit together. Maybe Suzie  _ would _ get the mother she deserved. Maybe the Chief Resident  _ wouldn’t _ be so bad. 

From her mouth to God’s ears, she thought. The way things were going, she was going to need a miracle. 

Or, perhaps, just something unexpected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, again! I got the second one out today after all.
> 
> So, this was inspired by the fact that it's canon that Doug and Kerry knew each other prior to her starting at County. It's canon that she knew Peter too back in med school. I've got an idea for a chapter about that, but it veers away from the focus of this fic and is also kind of sad, so we're not going to go there. (If you want to know, feel free to comment or message me on tumblr and I'll tell you about it.)
> 
> This was also inspired by the fact that we don't see Kerry get actually introduced to anyone except Mark. She shows up very briefly in "Welcome Back, Carter!" long enough to hire herself at County and give her iconic 'Bitch, you thought I was kidding' face, and then she shows up in "Summer Run" already part of the team. I liked the idea of a missing scene where she actually meets Susan outside (sort of) the ER. 
> 
> I'm still debating over the last slot before the finale, so if you've got any ideas, now's the time to share them. And, I'm serious. Otherwise, it might end up being very sad. 
> 
> Have a great rest of your Sunday night! Until next time.


	24. In Your Corner

Carter knocked several times on the door before loosening his tie.

None of the lights that he could see through the front window were on, but he had the feeling that someone was downstairs. And a few seconds later, his feeling was confirmed as the sound of uneven footsteps started down the hallway. 

The door opened to reveal Kerry, dressed in pajamas (flannel pajama pants and a University of Chicago t-shirt two sizes too big for her that most certainly wasn’t hers). She blinked a few times, first as her eyes adjusted to the dark of the night and second in response to the young man she found on her doorstep.

“I’m sorry. Did I wake you up?” Carter asked at the sight of her looking like she was ready for bed. 

“No, no. I was just staring at a computer for three hours,” she said, waving him away (and stifling a yawn). She stepped aside. “Come in.”

Carter nodded and stepped into the house. He automatically kicked his shoes off and shrugged out of his suit jacket.

“I was just deciding if I wanted tea or something stronger,” Kerry said as she stepped past him into the living room. “Can I interest you in something to drink?”

“Uh, what have you got?” 

He followed her around the corner from the entrance and into the kitchen where he took a seat at the table. Kerry opened the fridge and leaned over to peer inside. 

“I’ve got a vintage Merlot, a little bit of a Cabernet left, Stella, and…” She shifted something around inside the fridge. “Some Sunny D that must surely have fermented by now.”

“I’ll take a Stella, please.”

Kerry pulled out a bottle of the Belgian pilsner and set the bottle on the edge of the table closest to her. She then pulled out the bottle of Cabernet and emptied it into a Buzz Lightyear cup from McDonalds that had been drying in the dish strainer.

She yawned again as she pulled a bottle opener out of a drawer and handed it to Carter. 

“You sure I didn’t wake you up?” he asked, glancing up at the clock on the wall as she took a seat opposite him. 

“I’m sure. I was working.”

“Budget stuff?”

Kerry shook her head and took a sip of her wine.

“Nah. Carol and I are presenting at the National Association of Free Clinics conference in October, so I was pulling some thoughts together for our slides. And Dr. Elias pointed out to me the other day that I haven’t published anything in a while. 

“I told her it was because of the clinic, which isn’t  _ completely _ a lie, but she didn’t accept my argument that improving clinical care for the uninsured of Chicago should take precedence over writing research articles.”

Kerry let out a sigh. 

“I feel like I used to have an idea for an article every other day. Now I have the  _ Blues Clues  _ theme song stuck in my head every other day. Not that I’m complaining, but it’s certainly a stark difference.”

Carter chuckled. He took a long swig from his beer, relishing the feeling of the cold glass beneath his fingers. 

“Have you eaten?” 

Carter shook his head and waved her away. 

“I’m not that hungry.”

“That’s not what I asked you,” Kerry said pointedly. “Have you eaten?”

Carter let out a sigh of his own and shook his head. 

“No. Not since the wake.”

As if on cue, his stomach growled, negating his previous statement. 

Kerry drank down the last little bit of her wine and stood from her chair. She set the glass in the sink before opening the fridge again to pull out leftovers. 

Carter watched, sipping at his Stella, as she scooped out something resembling a casserole onto a plate from the cabinet and placed it in the microwave to heat up. Once the timer was set, she leaned back against the counter, exhaling as she shifted weight off her left leg and onto her right. 

“Sore today?” 

“I’m  _ tired  _ today. It was a long shift.” Kerry yawned again as if to prove her point. “There was a fight on some talk show. Some teenage girl’s mother lied and told her that her boyfriend that had gotten her pregnant was actually her half-brother live on national television. Susan happened to catch the girl in the stairwell on her way up to Mark’s M & M. I hate to think what she was on her way to do. And the talk show host outed a bunch of transgender women…”

Kerry paused, thinking. 

“Transgender women…I think that’s the right word. Because they’re transitioning into being women… I think that’s right but I might need to double check.” Then, Kerry shook her head. “Anyways, a bunch of them were outed to their partners.  _ Again _ , on national television. And having  _ been  _ outed, I-I-”

Kerry couldn’t even finish the sentence. She just closed her eyes and shook her head several times. 

“And of course, their partners had been involved in the fight too and were calling them all sorts of terrible things. And other patients started joining in…” Kerry let out a sarcastic chuckle. “EMTALA says I can’t kick people out for ‘inability to pay’. I’ve yet to find a statute that says I can’t kick people out for being assholes. And when I told Susan that and she said that if people could get kicked out of the ER for being assholes, I would have lost my job a long time ago. Emphasis on the ‘long time ago.’”

Carter and Kerry both chuckled. 

The timer on the microwave beeped. Kerry opened it and pulled the plate out. She mixed the leftovers with a fork to ensure they had been evenly heated before setting both plate and fork down in front of Carter and resuming her seat. 

Carter muttered a word of thanks and dug in. From the first bite, he realized how much he missed Kerry’s cooking. 

“How was the funeral?” she asked, leaning her chin in one hand. “I wished I could have been there for you. I was thinking about you if that’s any consolation.”

Carter pulled a napkin out of the basket on the table to wipe his mouth. He shrugged. 

“It was… fine. I wasn’t very close to him. He wasn’t really the kind of guy you could get close to.”

Kerry nodded. Carter took a few more bites of the casserole and washed it down with another sip of the Stella.

He sighed deeply.

“The whole time I was there, I just kept thinking ‘God, I hate this. I hate this, I hate this.’ And it wasn’t that I hated  _ them _ , it was just that…” Carter took a deep breath. “There was arguing. And blaming. And the whole shebang. And… And I knew I had to be there for Gamma. But even being there with her,  _ for _ her… I kept having this thought that I wanted to go home. 

“But I  _ was _ home. We were at their house. The house I grew up in. And… And even more than just- than just wanting to go home, I kept wanting to… I wanted to be with my family. And I was thinking  _ as _ I was standing there.  _ With _ my family.”

Carter rubbed a hand over his forehead and let out a deep breath. 

“I really hate being around them.”

The words tasted awful in his mouth. He tried to wash the taste away with more of the beer, but it didn’t work, nor did the few more bites of casserole he took. 

Before he knew it, both the plate and the bottle were empty. Kerry offered him more of both, but he declined with a shake of his head. 

“I wanted to go home, but I didn’t want to stay there. And I didn’t want to go to my apartment. So, I just started driving around and…”

“And you ended up here.”

Carter looked up at Kerry. A small smile had crept onto her otherwise tired features. 

“I miss living with you,” Carter admitted in a smaller voice than he intended when he spoke. “I feel like you guys spent more time with me and cared about me more in the ten months I lived with you than the whole thirty years before it.”

Kerry took his hand across the table. 

“I miss you living with us too,” she agreed. “And not just because I have to potty train the person that came in after you.”

Carter smiled and Kerry squeezed his hand.

“You are always welcome to come home, John,” she said softly. “You will always have a place with us. Even if it’s not as long as last time, you are always welcome here.”

Carter nodded.

“Any chance I can sleep on your couch tonight?”

Kerry chuckled, nodding. 

“I can’t guarantee you won’t get woken up really early.”

Carter thought back to the wake up calls that occasionally occurred throughout his time living in the Weaver-Lewis household and smiled.

“You guys still do that?”

“Not in the way you’re thinking. Susan put her foot down after Charlie was born,” Kerry said with another yawn. “But that doesn’t mean you won’t get woken up.”

Carter chuckled again and then stretched, yawning himself. Kerry smiled and stood up to clear away his plate and the empty Stella bottle. She put the rest of the leftovers back in the fridge before walking back into the living room to put away her computer and paperwork.

Once they had been safely stowed back in her computer bag, she started arranging the couch into a make-shift bed, first by arranging the throw pillows together and then by pulling a blanket out from a side table drawer. 

“I’d check to make sure there are no crayons or plastic dinosaurs in the couch cushions before you lie down,” Kerry suggested as she spread the blanket out. “I checked earlier, but it’s always worth it to check twice. Otherwise it may be a rude awakening for you.”

At Carter’s chuckle, she smiled and picked up her crutch from where she’d laid it on the floor. Given her level of exhaustion, he wasn’t surprised when her arm automatically slipped into the cuff and she began leaning on it for support. 

“Thank you, Kerry. Not just for tonight, but for everything. I don’t know if I ever really conveyed how much I appreciated all of it,” Carter said sincerely. “I’m really grateful for it. And I wanted to make sure I said that.”

Kerry waved him over towards her and, dutiful (faux) son that he was, he followed the direction without question. 

Once he was close enough, she wrapped her arms around him pulling him into a big hug. And even though her arm was still threaded through the crutch, he found the familiar pressure of the cuff against his back as she hugged him comforting.

“As long as you consider us your family, you will always have a home with us,” she said as she pulled out of the hug. “You remembered what told you a couple years ago?”

“If the branch you’re standing on breaks, you have a whole lot of other branches that you can hang onto,” Carter replied, his conversation on the couch with Kerry as vivid in his mind now as it was that night. 

“You will  _ always _ have other branches to hang onto.  _ Always.” _

She squeezed Carter’s arms encouragingly before she bade him goodnight and started for the stairs. Once she was upstairs and the light in the stairwell had been turned off, he finished undressing down to his undershirt and boxers. 

He laid his pants and tie out on the chair. And as he did so, for some reason, he thought about something one of the mourners today had said. Something about the death of his grandfather “pulling in Carters from all four corners of the earth.”

But as he laid down on the couch, listening to the creak of the floorboards above him and he uneven footsteps checking on the bedrooms down the hall before finally making their way to the master bedroom, he considered that he really didn’t need Carters from all four corners of the earth. He just needed the family he knew he had in his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one-shot collection wouldn't be complete without referencing the monologue for which it was named. 
> 
> I'd like to thank everybody-knows-everybody-does for requesting something with Carter because she likes when they hang out and I'd also like to thank my Sims 4 version of the Weaver-Lewis family (feat. Carter). I created it so that I could design the houses (as I'm a very visual person) and also because it's a great way to act out fanfiction scenarios in an AU that diverges a lot from canon. 
> 
> I say that the Sims family inspired it as, even after Carter splits from the family and moves away, he still comes over to the house almost every day. He is constantly calling and texting asking if he can come over, and as I was thinking of this chapter, that really made sense to me. Plus, I knew that I wanted to incorporate "Four Corners" in somehow, so Carter dealing with his biological family and then seeking out his found family just made sense. 
> 
> There's only one chapter left and I am very excited about it. I've been waiting for it for weeks and am very excited to share it with all of you. I've still got a couple pages left to type, so I'm unsure if it'll be posted tomorrow or Thursday, but it will definitely be sometime in the next few days. 
> 
> I look forward to sharing it with you and though it'll be closing the book on this here AU, I think you'll enjoy it. 
> 
> Until next time.


	25. A Forest of Trees

You walk into the County General Emergency Department. It’s the same and yet it is very, very different. You said you would never come back, and yet, here you are.

The man at the desk doesn’t recognize you. In fact, most of the people behind the desk don’t recognize you. Those who do look at you in awe. 

You’ve been gone, they say. They never expected you to come back, they say. Almost everything has changed, they say. 

Most of your friends are gone and nothing is the way you left it. 

Where have you been?

You see Mark. He looks at you like you’re a stranger. He is as surprised as the others, but also… hurt?

No wonder, you think, as he says you haven’t spoken in five years.

_Why… why wouldn’t I have..._

He has a scar on his head. He had cancer. Brain cancer, he says. The scar is from the surgery he had to remove it. 

He tells you it’s all better now, but when he looks at you, something is wrong. You should feel better, but you don’t feel better. 

Where have you been?

Mark has a ring on his finger. He is married now. He tells you that his wife is a surgeon named Elizabeth. You smile but you are confused. Who is Elizabeth?

_I know who Elizabeth is… I was there…_

Carol is gone. Doug is gone. Carter was nearly killed. Lucy _was_ killed but you don’t know who Lucy is.

_I know who Lucy is… She’s not dead…_

Kerry is surprised to see you, but she is cold and dismissive. She sees through you. You are not happy to see her. You don’t know her very well and you don’t want to.

_Why wouldn’t I…_

You’ve been gone for too long. You’ve missed everything. Where were you? Why did you leave?

_I didn’t leave…_

You’ve left for so long. You’ve missed so much. 

How could you leave her? How could you leave him? How could you _leave_?

_I didn’t leave… I didn’t leave..._

What’s wrong with you? You’ve been gone for years. You’ve missed everything and now it’s too late.

You’ll never get that time back. You’re out of time and now there’s none left.

You left your best friend behind and now he’s going to die. 

How could you do that to him? Where have you _been_? 

Where have you _BEEN_?

_WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?_

Susan awoke with a start. 

She was lying on her side, one arm wrapped under her pillow. Sunlight streamed in through the open window, masking the late winter cold outside it. 

She sat up and looked around. 

She wasn’t in Chicago. She was in Cincinnati. 

Of course, she was in Cincinnati, she thought. She _lived_ in Cincinnati. She’d lived in Cincinnati for almost eighteen years. 

Susan stood up and stretched for a second, her deep breaths trying (and failing) to clear the fogginess from her head. She made her way to the bathroom and flipped on the light to observe herself in the mirror. 

Her hair had been short in the dream, but in reality it was even shorter. The sides were shaved down to half an inch, with a long swept quiff on top. (Though, with bedhead, it was a little spikier than usual). 

She had only dyed it a few days before, and yet the gray was already poking through on the sides. She was fifty-two, so it was to be expected but she still tried to push it back as much as she could because the grayer it got, the deeper the lines on her face appeared. 

Susan brushed her teeth and went through her morning routine as usual, but something still felt wrong. 

Was she waiting for Kerry to get home from the hospital? No, she couldn’t be.

Kerry hadn’t worked in a hospital for, what, five years now? She’d stepped down in 2014 to help lobby for and implement the Affordable Care Act. During election years, she split her time between lobbying and writing about the health care policy proposals of various candidates. She had just arrived home from South Carolina last night and was due in Columbus first thing Monday morning.

Susan’s brow furrowed with every step she took out of the bedroom, down the stairs, and into the kitchen. There, she found Kerry sitting at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and scrolling through _The New York Times_ on her iPad. 

She too was older than she had been in Susan’s dream. 

She would turn sixty next year as Charlie had happily reminded her at the turn of the New Year. Her red hair had a few gray within it, but not _nearly_ as many had plagued Susan since she’d surpassed her forty-fifth birthday. And where Susan had trimmed her hair down short, Kerry had let hers grow to just above her shoulders. 

But, as if all of this wasn’t enough to prove to Susan she wasn’t trapped in a dream, when Kerry looked up at her, she was greeted with the familiar warmth of twenty-three years together as opposed to the cold of a five-year absence. 

“Good morning,” Kerry greeted as Susan took a seat across from her. “Suzie called. She's on her way down to see Sam because - and these are her words - he got his ‘ass handed to him by his clinical exams this week’. So, she’s coming down to offer moral support, which apparently means returning a table to IKEA and going to a basketball game with Charlie and her roommate tonight. She asked if we wanted to get dinner with them beforehand, so I said yes.”

Susan nodded absently as she took a seat at the table. As she sat down, Kerry stood up to fix Susan a cup of coffee. 

“I asked her if she needed any _protection_ for her weekend of moral support and she audibly gagged,” she continued, setting the cup down on the table. “I mean… they’re getting married in four months and they spend every weekend at each other’s apartments. I don’t know why she didn’t think I was going to ask.”

When Susan did not comment but rather just nodded absently, Kerry frowned

“What’s wrong?”

“I…” Susan inhaled deeply. “I had a really weird dream last night.”

“About what?”

“I was… I was at County. And it must have been a while ago, because Mark was there,” Susan began slowly. “But… But _I_ wasn’t. I hadn’t been there in… in _years_. And, somehow, I missed all of it.

“I missed him being sick the first time. I missed his wedding and-and Ella. And he said that we hadn’t…We hadn’t spoken in five years. At-at all.” Susan sucked in air as a sob began to rise in her chest. “Why wouldn’t I have spoken to him in five years? Not even… not even a phone call? Why would I have done that to him? He was my b-b-best friend. _Why would I have done that to him?_ ”

“Susan. _Susan_ ,” Kerry said, taking Susan’s hand from across the table as the latter threatened to break down. “ _Breathe_. It was only a dream.”

Susan did as she was instructed, but it didn’t stop the tears from welling in her eyes. 

“It’s just…” Susan took a deep breath. “Yeah. Yeah.”

“You _were_ there,” Kerry assured her gently. “I’ve got the pictures to prove it.”

Susan took another deep breath. The feeling of Kerry’s hand holding hers was helping to ground her, but there was still an overwhelming feeling of lingering guilt. 

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right,” Susan said, nodding. “I know. It’s just… You ever have those dreams where it feels so vividly real that you just can’t shake the fact that it’s not?”

“Are you kidding? I still wake up once a week trying to figure out what possessed me to leave my crutch in the other room the night before.”

Susan gave a small chuckle and nodded. She took a sip of the coffee Kerry had set in front of her. 

“And I didn’t know who Elizabeth was.” Susan frowned in confusion at herself. “I feel like I need to call her and apologize.”

“For forgetting her in a dream?”

“Yeah. Why? Is that too weird?” At Kerry’s replying nod, Susan rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll text her then.”

To prove her point, Susan pulled her own phone out of her pocket and scrolled through her recent conversations until she found Elizabeth’s name. 

**Elizabeth Corday** >

Hey. I had a dream last night that I didn’t know who you were. I promise I remembered when I woke up but I still felt the need to apologize.

Once the apology had been sent, she set the phone back down and took another sip of the coffee. It helped warm and relax her, but apparently not enough for the worry to leave her face.

At the look of continuing question from Kerry, Susan heaved another sigh. 

“I’m trying to think of why I would have left for five years,” Susan explained. “If it was after his wedding, then it would have been, what? Late 2001?”

“That sounds about right.”

“So, what would have happened five years before that that would have caused me to leave?”

They sat in silence for a moment, thinking. 

Kerry’s phone buzzed on the table next to her. As the screen lit up with the incoming message, so did the lightbulb in Susan’s brain. 

“Suzie. In the dream, I didn’t have Suzie. Maybe in the dream world, Chloe came back.” But just as Kerry nodded in acknowledgement, Susan frowned. “But that doesn’t make any sense. Even if… even if Chloe had come back sooner and had taken Suzie back, why would I have left County?”

“To follow her?” Kerry suggested. “I mean, you were ready to move heaven and hell to get her. I don’t see why that would have been any different if you hadn’t adopted her.”

Susan nodded at the logic, but still couldn’t help but shudder at the thought of having lost Suzie to Chloe all those years ago.

Then, Susan closed her eyes and shook her head again. When she opened them, they were brimming with tears once more.

“ _God_ , that would have been awful,” she thought aloud. “To leave for so long and then to come back just to watch him die? I mean, it was bad enough being there for the whole thing.”

Kerry took Susan’s hand. As their fingers intertwined, Susan thought back to the Kerry in the dream.

“I guess not having Suzie would explain why you looked at me the way you did. In the dream, I mean.”

“How did I look at you?” Kerry asked, her brow furrowing slightly. 

Susan let out a sigh, cringing at the memory of Kerry's expression, which was already beginning to fade along with the rest of the dream. 

“Like you didn’t know me.”

Kerry began to nod, but then her brow furrowed further. 

“Why would I have looked at you like I didn’t know you? I was working at County back when Chloe first left. Even if you had left for five years, if I was still at County when you came back, then surely I would have recognized you.”

“I mean you knew me but you didn’t... _know_ me.”

Kerry considered this for a moment. The emphasis seemed to make more sense as she started to nod, slow at first but then faster. 

“I guess that makes sense,” she said with a small shrug. “If you had never adopted Suzie, then we would never have become friends, let alone anything else.”

“Right. Because that’s when you started stalking me.”

“ _Stalking you.”_ Kerry rolled her eyes. “You left your door unlocked. You _wanted_ me to come over.”

“No, I _expected_ you to come over,” Susan corrected. “There’s a difference.”

“Well, you never kicked me out,” Kerry said, taking another sip of her coffee. “You always said you would if I got on your nerves, and yet, I’m still here.”

“That’s only because your name is on the mortgage,” Susan said, taking a sip of her own coffee.

“And if you never adopted Suzie, _I_ wouldn’t exist.”

Susan and Kerry both jumped in their chairs and looked towards the living room for the owner of the voice. 

Charlie popped up from where she’d been lying on the couch, her grin growing at the looks on her mothers’ faces.

“When did you get home?” Kerry asked as Charlie stood up from the couch.

“More importantly _why_ are you home?”

“I got here like half an hour ago. You said good morning to me, Momma,” Charlie explained as she crossed into the kitchen, where she assumed a look of great offense. “And I came home because I was under the impression that the people who lived here _liked_ me?” 

“I think you’ve got the wrong house,” Susan replied flatly. “Try next door.”

Charlie dropped into the chair at the end of the table dramatically. 

“You never react like this when _Suzie_ comes home.”

“That’s because Suzie lives an hour away and always _warns_ us when she’s coming home.”

“And speaking of coming home,” Kerry said, looking at Charlie. “How did you _get_ home?”

“I ran,” Charlie replied with a shrug. 

“All the way from campus?” Susan asked in disbelief, thinking of her daily commute from Blue Ash down to the University of Cincinnati.

“What, like it’s hard?” 

“Isn’t it like twenty miles from here?” 

“Fifteen point two according to my running app.” 

Charlie opened the app on her phone and showed it to Susan, who held it at arm’s distance (furthering Kerry’s theory that she needed reading glasses). On the screen was a long bright green line winding its way from Charlie’s residence hall all the way to their house. 

“You ran for an hour and forty-seven minutes straight?” Susan asked, handing the phone back to Charlie. “What time did you wake up this morning?”

“Mommy, you assume I _went_ to sleep.” At the look on Susan’s face, Charlie raised her hands defensively. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. I got up at eight.”

“And you just decided to run fifteen miles for the hell of it?” 

“I wanted to see if I could do it,” Charlie replied with a shrug.

Susan shook her head and then shot Kerry a look. 

“This is your influence.”

“Hey, I was never a runner.”

“Seriously, Kerry? _That’s_ your excuse?”

 _“Anyways,”_ Charlie said, interrupting them. “It was only as I was getting here that I realized that running here meant I was going to have to run fifteen miles back…And since I’ve already showered, can one of you drive me back? Please? So I don’t have to run thirty miles in one day? _Please?”_

“Charlie, I would never make anyone run any distance or length of time for any reason. However, I _cannot_ speak for Momma.”

Before Kerry had a chance to ask Charlie if she really _could_ run thirty miles in one day (and potentially freak Charlie out into thinking that she was going to _have_ to), the front door opened. 

“You’re home too?” Susan asked as Suzie kicked out of her shoes. “Is there some celebration I’m forgetting?”

Suzie shook her head as she started down the hallway towards the kitchen.

“I thought you were going to Sam’s,” Kerry added as Suzie kissed Susan on the cheek. 

“I am,” Suzie said, shrugging off her coat. “We’re going to Westchester to return the table, but you guys have the _receipt_ for the table.”

She crossed around the table to kiss Kerry on the cheek as well. Charlie held up her cheek for the same greeting and instead received a (hard) punch to the arm.

“Why do they get kissed and I get punched?” Charlie whined, rubbing her arm and pouting. “You’ve only been home for twenty seconds. I haven’t done anything to you.”

“You didn’t text me back last night.”

“Yes, I did,” Charlie replied quickly. But then she paused. “Wait, text you about what?”

“About the tickets for tonight.”

“That’s because I texted _Sam_ about them. You said he was the one with questions, so I texted him directly.” 

Suzie's mouth formed the “o” of realization, earning her a punch to the thigh from Charlie (as she couldn’t reach Suzie’s arm while sitting down).

“Also, the tattoo place emailed me,” Suzie said, taking her own seat at the table. “They have an opening tomorrow night.”

“Another tattoo?” Kerry asked. “Didn’t you two just get one on Charlie’s birthday?”

“No, we had to wait. Apparently the place has gotten a lot busier than it was last time Suzie went,” Charlie explained. Then, she leaned over and put her head on Kerry’s shoulder. “You want to come with us and get your tattoo, Momma?”

“Who told you I was getting a tattoo?” Kerry asked in reply, pushing Charlie away from her. 

“No one. But everyone else is getting one,” Charlie said, leaning her head against Kerry’s shoulder again (and not budging when Kerry tried to push her off). “I mean, Mommy got one. I’m getting one. Suzie’s got like seventeen.”

“I have _two,_ ” Suzie said firmly. “Two. Which is nowhere near seventeen.”

“Momma, you know how your hip replacement scar kind of looks like a slide?” Charlie asked, ignoring Suzie’s comment. “I think you should get a tattoo to make it _into_ a slide. And then get tattoos of Suzie and I when we were little sliding down it. I mean, you could get the grown-up versions of us, but it wouldn’t be as cute.”

“Speak for yourself,” Suzie said pointedly. “Though, Momma, that’s actually a really good idea.”

“I am not getting a tattoo,” Kerry repeated. “If you want to bother someone about tattoos, bother Mommy. She’s already said she wants more.”

Charlie looked utterly dejected, but sat up and scooted her chair closer to Susan. She leaned her head on Susan’s shoulder and then picked up her left had to turn it over. The ink of the words on the inside of Susan’s wrist was still the rich black of a fresh tattoo, but the skin was no longer raised or scabbed over. 

She’d gotten it on her birthday last November. She’d been thinking about it for a while, but when she found herself saying it to one of her residents, she figured it was time to make the reminder permanent.

Three words that served as further proof that, while there was no more time left with him, she made the most of the time she had.

_set the tone_

“Did it hurt?” Charlie asked, cocking her head sideways as she observed the tattoo.

“Did it hurt?” Susan repeated rhetorically. “Charlie, do you even know what a tattoo _is?”_

“I meant _afterwards,”_ Charlie replied, rolling her eyes as she let go of Susan’s hand. “Because that’s your writing hand.”

 _“Ohhhh._ Yes, it hurt to write for a week or so after I got it.”

Charlie let out a _hmmph_ as Susan’s phone buzzed. She slid her thumb across the screen to unlock it.

**Elizabeth Corday** >

Hey. I had a dream last night that I didn’t know who you were. I promise I remembered when I woke up. But I still felt the need to apologize.

Mark’s probably rolling in his grave.

But it’s alright. I forgive you.

Oh thank God. I was worried.

:)

Just don’t let it happen again.

Susan chuckled to herself and clicked the home button, the messages disappearing in favor of the apps on her home screen in front of a photo.

She clicked the screen off and then pressed the home button again. The same photograph was on the lock screen too, but this time it was not hidden behind a dozen colorful buttons.

It was a photo of her and Kerry in tank tops and shorts, standing on a trail surrounded by trees. Behind (and below) them in the distance was the city of San Francisco. And though it had been taken almost four years ago back in the summer of 2016, she still kept it as her lock screen.

Their twentieth anniversary was going to be that December, but neither of them wanted to celebrate in the middle of winter. So, instead, they decided to take their anniversary trip (/belated honeymoon) in June. 

Susan had managed to disconnect Kerry from the phone banking she had been doing on behalf of the Sanders campaign long enough to get her to call Michael Levin. He and his husband Ezekiel had moved out to Berkley so that Michael could do (another) surgical fellowship, this time in gender-affirming surgery.

They offered Susan and Kerry their guest room for a week if they wanted to make the trip.Not wanting to spend half their trip driving, Susan begrudgingly agreed to fly. Four hours and two questionably-prescribed Xanax later, they touched down at Oakland Airport. 

Susan insisted on only two things during their trip: She wanted to get drunk at a drag show in the Castro and she wanted to see some big fucking trees. They did both (and more), but it was their hike through the redwoods that had been the most transformative. 

They had been hiking through Muir Woods National Park with Michael and Zeke. Kerry had found herself a solid walking stick to use that had reminded Susan of her “Beach Crutch” that Suzie had found for her in North Carolina so long ago.

While they hiked, Michael informed them that an interesting fact about redwood trees was that they could not survive on their own. Their height and weight meant that their roots had to grow together in order for the trees to have the support they needed to grow. In other words, they couldn’t survive on their own. They had to live in a forest or they would die off.

Susan immediately thought of Kerry’s metaphor about family and that a family is not one tree but rather an entire forest of trees. 

It then made her consider where her own roots were. Some were in Ohio. Some were in Chicago. They tangled into the roots of other trees, spreading as far as North Carolina and Minnesota. It was even the reason they were out here on the other side of the country, as the roots of her tree were thoroughly tangled with Kerry’s which in turn were tangled with Michael’s, just as they had been for over forty years. 

As much as the branches tangled together, twisting and looping into each other as time and trust grew their forest, the roots tangled with each other as well. They spread wide and deep, building a firm foundation upon which the forest grew. 

And it was there, amongst trees so tall that they brushed the sky, everything made sense. It gave clarity to it all, from her family of origin to the family she found to the family she helped build and grow. No matter whether the branches and trees were still around, the strength of their roots could still be felt.

Across time and distance, love and loss, all the way to sitting at this kitchen table at this moment in time. 

_So long as the roots grow together, the forest thrives_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last October, I went to visit my roommate out in California. She was technically not my roommate anymore, as she had moved back home to the bay area the previous May. But given that we had lived together for four years and were one of the rare instances where we became  _ better  
> _ friends while living together, I still consider her my roommate (if only in my heart).
> 
> She lives in the Bay Area, so when I flew out to see her from my home in the Midwest (in a state that may or may not contain the city of Cincinnati), in addition to going into the city at some point, I wanted to see some big fucking trees. 
> 
> Given that it was October, I had already written “unexpected circumstances” and therefore had written the “Family is a Forest” monologue that takes place in Chapter 24. But when my roommate’s mom who had come with us explained that redwoods grow best in forests because the roots of the trees need to grow together for them to survive, I nearly started crying. 
> 
>   
> It was like the missing piece. These huge trees, the biggest on earth, could not survive on their own. They needed each other for support. Their roots had to grow together in order for them to thrive.
> 
> If you can’t tell by now, I’m not a doctor. I am a social worker. And in every class I take, when it comes to working with clients, the number one factor in recovery - whether from mental illness, crisis, or trauma - is social support. Having people that you can rely on and that will support you help you flourish. 
> 
> This semester, I am taking a class in Crisis and Trauma Intervention that I happen to be taking from a family therapist. Everything connects back to family and just as much as family can be the cause of problems, it can be the key to solving them too.
> 
> I write about family because family is a fascinating subject to me. We as a species need each other so much that we seek out other people. We fall in love. We raise children. We live together in communities and care about each other. And we do this regardless of whether those in our family are related to us by blood or not. And we do this even if the families that we come from are not the best.
> 
> In terms of the forest metaphor, sometimes the soil in which the roots exist is too toxic. Perhaps the pH is off or the soil is littered with debris or the roots are too far from water. But even when the soil may be a problem, roots can still grow. 
> 
> They can find water elsewhere. They can filter out the toxins. They can move to safer soil. And there, they can plant their roots deep and grow trees and forests where there previously weren’t any.
> 
> This officially closes the book on the “unexpected circumstances” universe, save for one last set of memes I plan to post on tumblr. I have thoroughly enjoyed writing this AU and I hope you have enjoyed reading it. Between this collection,  
> [ “unexpected circumstances” ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18901180)  
> ,   
> [ Seeing Double ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21497437)  
> , and all the little one-shots scattered on my tumblr, we are pushing 200k words of this universe total. (And that doesn’t even count the original novel I wrote last fall using this AU as a rough template.)  
>    
> And while this AU may be over, I can say with certainty that this will not be the last time I write about family. No matter what the focus of the story, family will always be part of it. 
> 
> May your forest grow vast and your roots grow together. Whatever shape your forest takes, may it thrive. 
> 
> May it be so. Amen.


End file.
